


shipwrecks

by deniigiq



Series: Pigeon and Crow [6]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool (Movieverse), Deadpool - All Media Types, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Eventual Romance, Getting Back Together, Grief/Mourning, I.e. no one can say what they really mean or they'll die, Lack of Communication, M/M, Singing, Sort Of, Team Red, believe it or not this is a humorous story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: JS: please be okay. Please be alive. Your friends won’t tell us anything. Please, peter. Be okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.The messages read slow like syrup. Their letters bunched together and rose and fell. He couldn’t keep track of them. They kept repeating themselves.JS: Peter? Is that you? Are you reading these messages?(Time passes. Peter and Johnny grow apart, but Peter never stops catching Johnny when he's falling. One time, he misses, and their hearts come crashing back together again.)
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Past Peter Parker/Gwen Stacy - Relationship, Peter Parker/Johnny Storm, Peter Parker/Johnny Storm/Samuel Chung, Vanessa Carlysle/Wade Wilson
Series: Pigeon and Crow [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993912
Comments: 109
Kudos: 421





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to time skip hell. 
> 
> References to grief and mourning, folks using sex as a coping mechanism, and some canon-typical violence and injuries. Please do what you need to to keep yourselves safe.

There were days where Peter thought about the smell of rain ten years ago, flicking down in individual droplets on a roof filled with pigeons. He could remember their coos and the scuff of a sneaker against the ground. It wasn’t his. It was navy with soot rubbed into the white ridges. It was about half a size too big.

Peter remembered borrowing that one and its mate once; their toes had felt floppy. They dragged a little on the pavement.

He’d borrowed Johnny’s jacket back then, too, one time. Exactly one time.

He liked to remember the warmth of the jacket. Liked to remember the heat of Johnny’s hand on the sleeve, pulling him and pulling him—

He didn’t like to remember anything beyond that.

The world was his oyster, after all, and he got to chose which parts were the pearls.

His fingers got cold and his arms rose up all around in cemeteries of goosebumps. Singing didn’t always make them go away, but Peter tried anyways.

These ones didn’t give a shit about _Grease_ , but they were totally down to multiply in rows and rows—waves of them that rode up his back and to the tops of his forearms and then back over his shoulders to his spine.

He heard the first footstep behind him and jerked up from his phone.

Lights out, boys, it’s time to rumble.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he crooned over his shoulder. “Looks like someone left you out for the birds, huh, Mr. Toledo?”

The scrape of fancy, hard-soled shoes stopped. The silence was broken by the sound of a safety clicking off. Peter locked his phone.

There was no need for spotlights.

“I got _chills_ , they’re multiplyin’. And I’m loooosin’ control—sup Wade?”

“Sup, kiddo. What’s the gossip?”

Wade’s heat next to him was welcome.

“That man came at me with a gun!” Peter told him.

“Congrats.”

“Thanks. You gotta anything good?”

“Yeah,” Wade said. “Got you a damn coat. When’re you gonna learn, Ben?”

The coat swished as it landed over his back, and Peter twisted back to see Wade’s bloody panda face. He was looking out over the sea of lights. That sparkling expanse of electric stars.

Peter scrunched the coat closer around his neck.

“’Cause the power, you’re supplyin’,” he sang.

A heavy arm landed across his shoulder. It rocked him back and forth, back and forth. Peter closed his eyes.

“You’re gonna make it,” Wade said.

Peter lost the last words in the crest of a sob.

He’d had to pick a language to get his damn degree for no other reason than the institution wanting him to suffer, he’d decided.

He could have taken Spanish. Should have taken Spanish. But why would he take Spanish? He’d already taken it in highschool. It was covered in memories and the smell of pencil wood and a sickly sweet disinfectant. College didn’t smell like pencils. It smelled like Jameson’s office as he told Peter that if he wanted to get anywhere above where he was, he needed an edge.

Jameson had a hallway filled with photographers out there. What did Peter have over them besides loyalty?

A BA in the shit would do it.

 _“Gr_ _ün, gr_ _ün, gr_ _ün sind alle meine Kleider. Gr_ _ün, gr_ _ün, gr_ _ün ist alles was ich habe,”_ Peter mumble-sang, swaying at his reflection in the window before his desk, “ _Darum liebe ich alles was so gr_ _ün ist, weil mein Schatz…”_

_Weil mein Schatz._

He swallowed and his breath shuddered.

_Weil mein Schatz tot ist._

_Es tut mir leid. Vergib mir,_ Gwen.

Something shattered in the other room and made his reflection’s eyes blow wide. He got up swearing and tripped over his bag on the way to grab the damn cat in the other room.

May thought that his German was coming along great. She told him so the next morning as he wrangled the old toaster into giving up the toast.

Haha. Toast. Like ghost but—

“Hon.”

Nope.

Today was a new day.

“Peter.”

“I’m fine,” He told the toaster.

May’s hands were warm and dry as they wrapped around his wrists. He did not cry.

“ _Darum liebe ich alles was so gr—_ hey, Joe.”

“Hey, Pete.”

“Whatcha got for me?”

 _The Bugle’s_ photography manager’s eyes were as heavy as his eyebrows were grey. Peter smiled wide.

“I’m so sorry, Peter,” Joe nearly whispered.

Peter made his eyes crinkle.

“Ya can’t cry if you’re laughin’,” he said. “Gimme. Inbox. Please?”

Joe sucked in a deep breath.

“ _Darum liebe ich_ —”

The pigeons blustered. Peter looked up from his workbook as they resettled all over them. One of them crab-walked up his shoulder and picked at the mask fabric covering his ear. She cooed.

“I don’t got anymore,” Peter told her.

She cooed again.

“The world don’t revolve around bread, Agnes,” he huffed. “There’s more to life than carbs—consider: carbs, stacked.”

A falling star snatched his eye away from Agnes’s orange one.

It was a star of sorts. More like comet bursting through the evening haze. An asteroid. Something big, hot, and burning. It was hurtling down towards the water, lighting up the whole damn sky.

Six seconds.

Peter’s breath caught in his throat.

Five seconds.

The pen in his hand slipped out of it.

Four seconds.

Three seconds.

He scrambled up.

Two seconds.

 _No_. Not again.

His arms burned—literally burned. The wreckage in the water reeked of gasoline. Burning oil. It smelled like all the worst parts of the ocean and an oil spill all twisted up into one.

Swimming through it was an exercise in precision and molasses.

Not again, though.

Not again.

He managed to get to shore and threw the body up onto the rocks first. It was still breathing. Its head lolled. Its lips were flecked with blistered skin. The tarry water didn’t want to give it up, but to it—the water--Peter said ‘fuck you.’

Not tonight. Not this one. Peter still had this one.

He dropped an ear to listen to Johnny’s filthy, slick chest and found it warm. The heart inside was throbbing away as strongly as ever.

He’d be okay. Peter could hear the shouting getting closer.

He’d be okay. The kids would find him.

Peter struggled up and tried not to slip back into the water on his way out of dodge.

Wade told him that he sang when he was distressed, which, in hindsight, explained why Peter could only think in notes and refrains these days.

Red whispered that he understood. He never said why.

His partner’s name was Franklin. He’d shaken Peter’s hand with eyes as blue as a cold January sky. Peter thought that he was too sensible to hang around a guy like Red, even without the horns on his helmet.

Word on the street said that Franklin wasn’t Red’s only partner. There had been another. People said she’d had blue eyes, not that Red would know or care.

Jessica said that her name had been ‘Karen’ and now no one spoke about her. She warned Peter not to speak about her.

Red’s partner was Franklin.

Red’s love was Foggy.

He was the only man that Red let fuck him these days. It took Peter four years to figure out why.

Franklin Nelson was January skies and a heart of steel incasing something lost and something gold.

It was hard to find unwavering loyalty these days. Red couldn’t see gold, but he knew that it warmed to the touch, to the flesh. He pressed into it and sighed and shook, and Peter didn’t blame him for taking what comfort he could find, where he could find it.

He didn’t blame him for never mentioning Franklin Nelson as Red, the horned devil, or Matthew Murdock, the attorney. The urge to protect was all encompassing. Peter knew this.

Red would die before Franklin Nelson took his last breath.

He’d already lost blue-eyes Karen.

Gwen’s eyes were blue, too.

_Auch irhe Augen waren blau._

Hm. No. English was better, still.

He was told to write an autobiography in images, which was so fucking funny that Peter almost snorted in class. He hid his smirk behind a hand when the folks around him turned back with furrowed brows.

The professor up front hadn’t heard him and didn’t care. She went on about writing an autobiography. She was mostly interested in lighting.

Peter rubbed knuckles under his chin.

Lights, he had.

He was assigned a partner to review the work of for this project. He hated him more than he should have. His hair was blonde and his eyes were blue and he smiled and said things like ‘go easy on me, okay?’

No.

No, fuck you. Peter wasn’t here to go easy. He was here for an BA in Photography. He was here to show Jameson that a hallway of artists had nothin’ on him. He was going to be certified.

He’d gotten here late and he needed to leave early.

There was no ‘easy’ pal.

The partner smiled at him with infuriatingly even, white teeth and dark eyelashes and Peter wanted to wipe that smirk off like burning red lipstick.

They fucked in the lab. No one else was in. It was late. Late enough that the windows were all dark and the old wood seemed more grain then stain. Blonde and Lashes’s name was some damn thing that started with a B—probably Bradley or Hadley or Brett or Bratt or what the fuck ever. Peter couldn’t remember.

He wasn’t thinking about him.

He was thinking about blue eyes and blonde hair twisting between his fingers. He was thinking about reddened lips and pink lipstick and a wink.

But Gwen was gone now. She was cold.

She didn’t care what Peter did anymore. She was resting. She’d stay resting. Three weeks—four weeks—it was nothing. Peter had the rest of his life to carry this stone; people kept telling him it would get lighter, but those people weren’t also carrying the weight of their uncles’ murder in their arms under the new boulder.

He couldn’t come thinking of the dead, though. So he leaned back and sunk his heels in and let himself think of Brett—Brad—Brendon— _whoever_.

He reminded him of navy sneakers and the smell of pencils.

Of burning oil.

He reminded him of a night spent in a twin bed, under the covers, whispering. Unbearably hot, but cold just on the other side of the blanket.

Bradon’s gasps took on a staccato beat and Peter’s hips canted up to match it.

Somewhere, a lighter devoured the wick of a candle.

Peter shook hard through the orgasm.

Wade’s hands were huge. They always had been—ever since Peter had laid his in the center of them that first time.

Back then, he’d looked up into Wade’s mask and had been perplexed to find it friendly somehow. He’d been shivering and Wade’s palms were warm through his gloves.

He’d told Peter to go home.

He’d dusted ash off the top of his shoulders and had pushed a thumb across one of the tears there, trying to close it without thread. It had peeled back open the second Wade’s hand had left it.

Deadpool was said to be a heartless brute. A soulless man condemned to roam as some kind of joyous zombie. He liked to kill. He lived to kill. But in that moment, and in the one after and in the one after, Peter had never felt anything but safe in his company.

It should have been a sign early on that he wasn’t meant to play with the Big Names. It should have been a sign that he’d never fit in among those people, but he’d been naïve. He’d thought that he could change things—could change people, the way that people changed him.

The Avengers were nothing but homes for lies and fury. They were places where sorrow came to churn into self-importance.

The Avengers weren’t 25 years old, working on year two of a bachelor’s degree four nights a week while the rest were filled with taking pictures that only two editors would ever see.

May told him to spend his money on his tuition. The thought was laughable. Money went home first. Money went to the bills. Money went to giving May breathing room to build up long-depleted savings.

Then, and only then, did money go to tuition.

Wade had the right idea. If Peter demanded payment for his services as Spiderman, at this point, he’d be rollin’ in dough. But alas.

It didn’t matter. Not really.

Wade was a good person, despite everything. His hands were big and he let Peter sing and talk to the birds. To this day, he still called Peter ‘Ben,’ even though Wade, more than anyone, knew that the man who bore that name was long gone.

He didn’t judge Peter for cycling through his series of masks. He knew them better than anyone else.

And that night, after Peter shoved Bradley-Brendon away from him and ran—literally ran as fast as he could away from the lab, he understood Peter’s singing.

Peter couldn’t grasp at a single song. They were all blending together. They were all smearing together into a tapestry of color and fury and disgust and—

“Come here, Ben.”

He let Wade gather him up.

He let Wade hold him. Rock him.

He let him see the tears and the snot and the sobs.

Someone had to know. Someone had to see that Peter was sorry.

He was so sorry.

Months blurred by into something dark and blue and lit with the crackling yellow light of strings of holiday bulbs. Peter couldn’t see much beyond them; they were wherever he went. Sometimes red. Sometimes white.

His feet took him through the whirling lights of traffic. He was told by someone—he couldn’t remember their face, only their voice--that his parents had to be proud.

An exhibit. In New York City.

Him. He’d put on an exhibit. Two exhibits—Three, even.

He was at the top of his class, somehow.

He couldn’t remember any of it, though. The whole year tasted like ash.

He opened the photographs when it was over. It was getting cold again. Another fall. Another Autumn. This time one turquoise scarf short. Gwen always used to wear one about now.

That didn’t hurt as bad as it had a year ago. Numbness could be followed by gratitude. 

May told him she’d be back at seven. She wanted to have dinner. Peter promised her that they would, and it was like waving her off had shattered the layer of ice over his whole body.

If he was a glacier five minutes ago, then now he was a lake.

Gwen was gone. He had mourned her. It was time.

He stood up and opened the door to his bedroom. Six hours until seven.

Five hours until seven.

Four.

Three.

Two.

An empty room made all the difference. No more cutesy posters. No more band stickers. Nothing on the back of the door, nothing on the front of the door. All the laundry done. The floor swept and vacuumed. Clothes that didn’t make him want to wrap himself up in them went out. Clothes that had never fit went out with them. Shoes worn to bits went into a bag, followed by old cords from appliances that had never been fixed.

It all went out and a few blocks down, half to the Goodwill, half to the community center.

He came back to a room that smelled unfamiliar.

A fresh start. A clean slate.

He ordered new bedding online and washed down the desk—reorganized it.

May came home and they had dinner. She recognized Ben’s blue flannel on Peter’s shoulders. It was still too big.

She said that it suited him.

Spiderman was a release. Another mask in the collection and Peter could _soar_. He could fall and skate and glide and whoop.

Gwen was no longer.

Peter had lit the candle. He’d said the Kaddish.

He’d stepped out that morning and had caught the end note of the smell of smoke in the kitchen, where the yizkor candle sat on the stove, no longer illuminated with a tossing flame.

It wasn’t that he wanted freedom from Gwen, but rather, the weight of remembrance was crushing.

He’d born the guilt for a whole year. He’d done what he could. He’d tried—he’d truly tried. And it was time now.

Time to move on.

Spiderman dove through the city, illuminated by car lights and leaping from street-sign to streetlamp to fire-escape to flagpole.

Sirens blared. People chattered. Crowds passed underneath him, all dressed up for the night in jewel satins and shining hair. Phone screens—bright, teal beacons, raised themselves to the heavens, all facing him.

They took pictures of Spiderman.

They took videos of Spiderman.

Peter could laugh. It felt so good. He’d given them a show. Hey, who wanted to see a magic trick?

“Bi-derman, Bi-derman, does whatever a— _Jesus, Wade_.”

“Did I scare you?” Wade tittered.

He was in a good mood.

“You couldn’t scare a dying dog,” Peter scowled. “What’s the occasion? Is there a Pearl Jam concert happening?”

Wade jabbed a finger at him.

“No, but if there was, I wouldn’t tell you or the Missus,” he said. “Y’all don’t deserve to witness real music.”

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Hey—

“Bi-derman? Is this how you come out to me?”

Peter stared.

“You know funny?” he asked. “Yeah, whatever it is, you’re the opposite of it.”

“Handsome?” Wade tried.

“No.”

“Breath-taking?”

“Too literal, murderer.”

“Pft. Sure thing, Bi-derkid.”

“Pearl Jam fan.”

“ _Listen, you brat_ —”

Amazing.

“What brings you to my humble abode?” Peter asked magnanimously, gesturing to his present collection of pigeons and the one gull, Clarence, who was running an undercover operation as one.

“You live like this?” Wade sneered.

Peter danced his toes over the edge of the roof, waiting for an answer.

It took a few moments before Wade got tired of trying to wait Peter out.

“Fine,” he said. “I heard a rumor.”

Peter perked up.

“What kind of rumor?”

“Big, big rumor,” Wade said. “You wanna hear it?”

Do bears shit in the woods? Yeah. Obviously Peter wanted to hear it.

“Okay, don’t freak out.”

Oh, this was the good shit. This was ‘Luke Cage and Jessica Jones are having a baby and naming it after the Immortal Iron Fist’ levels of good shit. Peter needed a moral support animal. He made Wade shut up and snagged Cheeto and Kitkat from their navel-gazing club and hugged them in preparation.

Wade asked him if he was ready now.

He was.

“Great. Okay, so you know your little flamebrain?”

Peter’s grip on the birds loosened.

“Johnny?” he asked. “Johnny B. Goode tonight?”

“The one and only,” Wade said. “He broke up with that girl of his. Folks say he was _cheatin’_ —and get this, it was with some Skrull lady.”

Bullshit.

Absolute bullshit.

“Fuck off, Johnny don’t cheat,” Peter spat.

“Ehn. Says _you_ ,” Wade huffed.

Stupid. This was stupid. Peter released the birds and double-checked the folks down at street-level for any crimes that might distract him from the bubbling in his stomach.

“Ahhhhh, do you know what I see?”

“Shut up, Wade.”

“I see an _opportunity_. You know, to prove your l’il buddy’s innocence.”

UGH.

This again.

“I ain’t doing shit unless he pays me,” Peter said. “DD bit Richards the other day, did you hear about that?”

Wade cackled.

“Sure fuckin’ did, son,” he said. “Richards doesn’t have a goddamn clue how long he’s had that one comin’. Nelson’s been the only thing standing between him and nine fingers for _years_ now. Turned his back for half a second, Ben. Half a fuckin’ second and you know Red usually ain’t see shit, but boy did he see his chance there.”

Red, you piece of shit.

God, someone get that guy some shots. Who knew what pestilence he was carrying.

“Hey now, you’re in a good mood, Benny my boy. What’s brought on this cheer? I thought the brood and gloom was gonna stick to you for another year yet.”

Mmmm.

“Lit the candle,” Peter hummed.

“Hey. Now that’s worthy of a celebration.”

Mmmm, exactly.

“Don’t talk to me about Johnny,” Peter sniffed. “I’m havin’ a good night.”

“Copy that.”

Nice.

“Hey,” Peter said, perking up. “You know what I really want to do?”

“No, what?”

Peter beamed.

“Let’s go bang some rocks together,” he said.

Spiderman was very capable. Peter needed folks not to forget that. It had been eleven years now. A whole eleven years since he’d set foot into that dark night and had gone all bug-boy on the world. And with Wade calling it a night after the fifth gun confiscated for posterity and the fourth body screeching a curse upon the benevolent being that was the city’s favorite masked menace, Spidey deserved a snack.

Preferably something cheesy—hold the pepperoni, Sal.

Munch, munch, munch, pizza in the morning, pizza in the eve—

HELLO, FRIEND. What on _earth_ are you?

“Peter,” May said in the morning.

“She’s my friend and I love her,” Peter snapped.

May’s eyebrow was about to reach breaking point.

“It’s okay, baby, I love you, you funky pigeon, you,” Peter crooned to his new duck friend.

He was calling her Nancy. Nance for short. Nana to her future grandducks.

“We’re a lot alike, you and me,” Peter told her. “You clearly got lost 2000 miles back. _I_ clearly was misplaced at birth. You think you’re a crow. _I_ think I’m a crow.”

Nance jabbed her bill into his hand. Peter turned it over and let her have the seeds inside of it.

“You like nut protein. _I_ like—”

“Peter Parker?”

Oh shit, oh shit. Code red—blue—orange? What were the codes? No, wait, nevermind the codes. Fuck the codes, he had to—

“Is that you? what are you doing here?” Sue Storm asked him.

Peter’s internal desire to scream translated itself into gesturing at the ducks before him with both hands and blurting out, “M-migrating?”

It could have been worse. He could have jumped in the lake.

Sue’s hair had grown long. She had it braided at the moment and was wearing what Peter could only assume was high-mom fashion. It looked like gray leggings with floral cut-outs in them and a zip-up fleece vest over a long-sleeved black Underarmor shirt.

She had two kids with her.

 _The_ kids.

Peter glanced at the tree next to him and diagnosed it too short for climbing. It was a shrub at best.

Digging, though—that was definitely still an option. If he went fast enough he could have a burrow by the end of this conversation.

“It’s been ages,” Sue Storm said. “Literal ages. Actual years. How’ve you been?”

Oh.

Well. Could be worse. Girlfriend died horrifically last year, finally gave the school-thing another shot, still haven’t been promoted at work. You know. The good stuff.

“I know you’ve been busy, we see you all the time and think about you a lot,” Sue said. “Are you doing okay? Do you need anything? Johnny’s going to freak when he hears we bumped into you.”

OR maybe she could just, you know, _never mention it to him, ever_?

Peter liked that option. That was a great option.

“You should come by sometime—if you’re comfortable, I mean,” Sue said while her kids squinted at Peter like he was some alien life-form.

Peter forced himself to smile.

It was always better to smile. People loved a fuckin’ smile.

And maybe, if he just smiled hard enough, his face would crack in half and collapse in on itself and he could die in peace here with Nance as his witness.

Sue Storm’s face did not smile back, Peter noted. In fact, it began a descent into something familiar that made his stomach drop.

“Ah, sorry, sorry,” he said. “I’ve actually got to get back. It was nice seeing you.”

It wasn’t.

Peter was going to puke.

“Sure,” Sue said slowly. “Take—take care of yourself, Pete.”

 _Don’t call me that. Don’t you call me that_.

“You too,” Peter said. “Byeeee.”

He swerved onto the path and shoved his hands into his pockets. He couldn’t help checking over his shoulder every couple yards or so.

The Spidey Sense rang in his ears like tinnitus. His spine crawled.

As soon as he glanced back and saw no blonde hair and no blue eyes, he broke into a sprint.

Gwen was gone. Gwen was dead.

That was it. Those were the last blond hairs and blue eyes that Peter was dealing with ever again. Brad—Brendon—whatever the fuck his name was, was a moment of weakness. He’d been an attempt at a rebound that hadn’t worked--a distraction from Peter’s grief at the time. That was all he was.

He had nothing to do with pencils or navy sneakers or the smell of a candle burning out.

He had nothing to do with that tiny twin-sized mattress or the smell of rain out on the Statue of Liberty.

He was just a shadow when Peter had needed shade.

God, he felt sick.

God, this day was supposed to be another of freedom.

He got home and, even though it was the middle of the day, he went and took a shower. The hot water felt too nice so he wrenched the dial to cold and stood under the spray until the nausea was replaced by shivering.

His arms itched.

He kept smelling the end of that yizkor candle. He couldn’t get it out of his nose.

He went to bed. Sleeping seemed like the only option for some reason.

It was the only place where he didn’t think of them.

The moths.

He woke up hot and muzzy to his phone filling the room with obnoxious light from its face. He blinked at it and rolled over towards the wall.

He swallowed.

The phone buzzed again.

He took a deep breath.

It buzzed a third time. Not a call. Text messages.

He scrunched his eyes shut.

No. He wouldn’t look. He wouldn’t look. He wouldn’t look.

**JS:** peter???? oh my god sue said that she saw you out today. Is this even your number still? How’ve you been man?

He shouldn’t have looked.

Great. Now he had to get a new number. Now he had to uproot all his goddamn documents, had to update his resume, had to change his mobile banking number.

All this because Susan Storm couldn’t keep her goddamn mouth shut.

UGH.

Fuck it.

Fine.

Whatever it took.

**JS:** Peter?

 **JS:** are you there? Peter?

Stop.

**JS:** maybe this isn’t your number anymore?

Yes. Yes, let’s go with that.

**JS:** is it anyone’s number? The texts are going through? Can anyone read these?

No. Johnny. Please.

**JS:** hello?

 **JS:** maybe not?

_Johnny, please._ Stop.

**JS:** if you’re not peter, I’m sorry for the barrage of messages. It’s just that me and my friend used to talk every day. That’s all.

Peter crammed his eyes closed.

Ten years ago there had been navy sneakers and the smell of Johnny’s neck. There had been a night hidden under a blanket that was suffocating, but that made Peter hiccup and cling. He wanted to stuff his face in a pillow in embarrassment just thinking about it.

He could remember, though, laying his cheek on Johnny’s bare chest. He could remember feeling pink-cheeked and overheated and young.

One time, a long time ago, around the time he’d laid his palms against Wade’s for the first time, his heart had beat in his chest at the sight of tossing hair on a roof. It had fluttered at the fingertips held out to him.

Johnny’s hands were thin in the bone and knobbly at the knuckle and, back then, they’d been bigger than Peter’s.

They were warm. Always warm. Peter had held the right one with his left. They’d laced their fingers together and Johnny had smiled at him like sunshine glinting off the Atlantic.

It had felt something like what Peter had felt when Gwen turned his way after dragging him out to play in the snow with her—like the world had stopped for a moment to catch its breath.

Johnny’s lips were the first that he’d kissed.

Johnny’s hand was the first that he’d held.

Johnny was—

Johnny was.

The Human Torch.

Peter should have known from the start that playing with fires got you nothing but burned, but back then, the fiery eyes of a sunshine boy like that had made the fire seem worth it.

Ahaha.

Ahahahaha.

No. Not again.

**JS:** is it weird to pretend that you can read these, Peter?

 **JS:** maybe its weird

 **JS:** I saw you on the news the other day. I’ve seen you a lot actually

 **JS:** the kids too

 **JS:** I know it was you who dragged me out of the river last year. People saw you. You know that, right?

You don’t know shit, Johnny Storm.

**JS:** I don’t understand

 **JS:** why won’t you talk to me? It’s been years. You do this every time, Peter.

 **JS:** you don’t have to. We could just talk. You could say what you want to me.

 **JS:** I promise. I’ll be fine. I’m sturdier than I look.

Shut the fuck up, Johnny Storm. You don’t know that.

You don’t know when you could die.

**JS:** when sue saw you yesterday she said that you look so different. She barely recognized you.

 **JS:** she didn’t say how

 **JS:** how much have you changed?

‘How much’ was the wrong question.

**JS:** why do you keep catching me? Where do you come from? How do you know where to be? I thought

 **JS:** nevermind

 **JS:** I just

 **JS:** I’m sorry

No. No, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no.

Go away. Go back. Things were easier yesterday. Please. Let things be easy again. They were finally making sense again.

Please, Johnny.

Please.

**JS:** if you ever need anything just let me know okay? I’ll catch you too. No questions asked.

Fuck your questions. Fuck your blond hair. Fuck your blue eyes.

Don’t call again. Don’t text. Don’t write.

Stay over there with your happy family. Be loud and bright and safe.

Please, god. Let him be safe.

Peter woke up and picked up his phone and, within an hour, was standing in front of the Verizon store with his fingers nearly shattering the plastic in his hand.

He stood there for a long time. One of the employees inside saw him staring and made a face.

He couldn’t do it.

He left.

The text messages kept coming. Peter didn’t open them. He stopped reading them. There was no point and he was already busy. It wasn’t hard.

He had more exhibitions. He had more work as Spiderman—there was always work. DD pissed off an owl-man. Wade cut the tail off a giant sleeping rat. A _very_ familiar cab driver slammed a door into Peter’s head when he was picking himself up out of the gutter after taking a solid hit from a man with horn topping off his suit of armor.

The world went to black and white and then swirling colors.

Peter picked himself up and thought his vision was still blown out from the fall and the slam when he realized that it wasn’t either of those things. The glow came from another comet.

That goddamn falling star.

He started to get up faster. Someone had to catch that thing. People would get hurt. People would—

Fingers seized around his ankle.

His stomach dropped. He dug fingers into the ground, but it was no use. They left lines in the asphalt and that was all.

He kicked out at the hand, aiming to break grip or bone, but another palm seized his foot and twisted hard enough that he both heard and felt it crack.

A wave of nausea crashed through him. The Spidey Sense shattered into spots in his eyes.

He might have wretched. He couldn’t remember. The only thing in his head as Rhino flipped him over and raised a fist was the comet.

No one would catch it.

The fist went higher and Peter threw up his arms to protect what he could of his head. His ribs were fair game. They’d shatter into his lungs. Puncture them like a twisted, gnarled cage.

It was a bad way to die.

He woke up to the sound of voices shouting over him. They sounded urgent. He couldn’t understand them. He could only feel something hot on his face. His shoulder, too. Actually, his whole chest. It felt strange.

Burning and cold all at once.

Why was it cold?

“Spidey? Spidey, stick with us, bud. You’re gonna make it, just hold on.”

He didn’t know this voice or these hands. A paramedic maybe? How had they gotten here?

“Don’t die. Come on, pal. Don’t die. Hold on. You’re gonna make it.”

Hold on to what?

Hold on to who?

It was all too much.

“SPIDEY. SPIDERMAN. DON’T. Don’t sleep. Don’t sleep. DON’T—”

The world went black again.

Red’s finger tips were familiar. They were scarred to shit and heart-wrenchingly gentle. Peter reached for them to steady their movement on his shoulder.

He heard DD’s breath catch, then a prayer said over his hand.

**JS:** peter?

 **JS:** I’m sorry

 **JS:** I’m so sorry

 **JS:** please be okay. Please be alive. Your friends won’t tell us anything. Please, peter. Be okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

The messages read slow like syrup. Their letters bunched together and rose and fell. He couldn’t keep track of them. They kept repeating themselves.

**JS:** Peter? Is that you? Are you reading these messages?

These were new letters.

They were sticky too—kept sliding past each other. Or maybe that was Peter’s eyes falling shut. He didn’t remember dropping the phone, but when he woke up, it was on the bedside table, and then the next time, it was gone.

It took three days before the drugs wore off long enough for Peter to appreciate the burns. They were…extensive. He hadn’t been awake for his time in the burn unit. He had an IV and a person who came to the apartment to redress his wounds over and over and over.

It was exhausting. People kept taking measurements. May kept taking his temperature. He kept waking up in panic and not being able to move.

There were more drugs, then. Things to keep him calm.

They didn’t help when Peter saw the news and watched the block explode into fire. He’d been classified as one of the victims. There was a single paramedic team out there now who’d had the pleasure of shredding his suit, which, apparently hadn’t had much left of it to be shredded anyways.

They knew who they were.

Peter couldn’t move enough to track them down, even if he wanted to.

May told him not to worry about it at the moment. She begged him to stay still.

The explosion had taken out Rhino. God knew where he was. God knew what his burns looked like.

Peter’s head fell back against the pillow.

The ‘I’m sorry’s made sense now.

No one had caught the comet. This was what they got for it.

**JS:** I don’t know what else to say. Please be okay. PLEASE be okay. Please be okay. Please be okay.

 **PP:** you think I’m that easy to kill, candlestick?

Fuck it. Why not?

Another day. Another narrowly escaped dance with death.

Life was too short to sit in it alone.


	2. tinnitus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> references to abusive past partners

It was almost a joke now, the whole Lyja thing.

Johnny was over it at least, even if the entire fucking city wasn’t. He just couldn’t find it in him to care about that when his phone was beaming with a message from someone who’s face he’d nearly forgotten.

Tiger’s eyes.

Won’t you be so lucky?

Peter Parker wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead, despite everything that Reed had wheedled out of Daredevil. Despite the broken ankle. The smoke inhalation. The second-degree burns all over.

The paramedic who’d dug Peter out of the piles of ash and asphalt he’d been found in had told Sue that the suit he’d cut off of him had been burned so badly that the guy’s fellow EMTs hadn’t believed him when he’d said that Peter was Spiderman.

No one believed him. The proof was sitting, blackened, in a hazardous waste disposal somewhere.

Peter Parker had been only identified as Peter Parker at the burn unit.

No one was allowed to see him but family. Sue and Reed were denied access individually, while Johnny laid unconscious in the medical bay at home.

Yet his heart still beat.

And this whole time—this whole week, he’d been receiving Johnny’s messages.

Hell, fuck the week. The two weeks. 14 days, and Peter’s old number was still _his_ number. Johnny hadn’t been texting a ghost.

He could barely breathe at the thought. The kids were arguing outside his door, but their ire was dampened by the letters on the screen in Johnny’s hand.

**PP:** you think I’m that easy to kill, candlestick?

Johnny finally took in air and laid the phone on his chest so that he could focus on the closing of his throat.

In terms of teenage romances, Johnny had to say that his and Peter’s hadn’t been, hm.

Completed? Was that the right word?

It was hard to know. What Johnny did know was that it had never really ended, much like it, somehow, had never felt like it had fully begun.

Time and time again, it had been like they were just getting together. Just getting together. Taking another step towards getting together. _Almost_ getting together.

Baby Johnny hadn’t known what to do with all that. He’d been too uncertain of the weight of his steps to let them land on the surface of Peter Parker’s moon.

He’d been so afraid of leaving marks at times, that he’d stuffed his hands into his pockets and told them to stay there, lest he scare off this one good thing.

At some point, maybe through lack of touch or fear of the unknown, he’d found himself counting the days it had been since he’d seen the face of that boy in that red and blue suit.

Two turned to three turned to five turned to two weeks.

Peter slipped through his fingers, and Johnny let him go, time and time again, until all that remained of them as one unit were heavy words spoken through exhaustion on the cold, oxidized metal frame of the Statue of Liberty.

The wind had blown at their faces. The air smelled of brine.

Peter had wrapped his arms around Johnny’s shoulders while they shook and had promised him, time and time again, that the world wasn’t caving in. That it wasn’t Johnny’s fault when things went to shit.

Peter was a good guy. A _good_ guy.

But they just weren’t ready. Eventually the kisses faded off into tight hugs, and even those loosened with each sordid meeting.

Johnny learned how to drive.

He learned how to temper his rage.

He walked up to a stage decorated with wreaths and ribbons and rosettes in blue and yellow and remembered on the way that his family was there in the crowd. Only his family.

Peter had asked him how the ceremony was over text.

Johnny had said it was nice.

The conversation died off, and then that was that.

At 22, Johnny had snapped awake one night from a nightmare littered with blackened limbs and building rubble. Before he’d realized what he was doing, he’d grabbed his phone to check the time and had absently scrolled through his contact, trying to think of someone who might be awake and indulgent of a brief distraction. He’d passed by Peter’s name on a swipe and his thumb had frozen.

He’d scrolled back to find it again and had tapped on the box.

The message screen had been empty.

It felt like sucker punch.

He hadn’t even noticed when he’d transferred his data to the new phone that some of his texts had been lost. Years of texts. Messages that Johnny used to go back and read and reread when he needed to remind himself that the universe was neither empty nor uncaring.

Gone.

All of them.

Nothing Peter had ever done made whatever they had feel like it had ended.

No, see, that was all AT&T.

There was a knock at the door. Johnny pressed fingers into his eyes and asked for just a moment. Whoever was outside waited while he banished the moisture and levered his aching bones up into a shape that resembled a sitting posture. He hid his phone under the covers and called out to the knocker.

Sue creaked open the door.

She apologized for the kids’ noise levels. She asked if he was okay.

He was.

She asked if she could get him anything.

He was fine.

She said that she’d have one of the kids bring up dinner when it was ready, and he told her not to worry about it. He was going to order out that night.

She left and he immediately went back to the phone.

**PP:** you think I’m that easy to kill, candlestick?

The message was still there.

The first and only one in an empty text box.

Johnny didn’t know what to say. He’d just lifted his other hand to the phone’s plastic case when he jumped at the sudden rattle of the thing in his hands.

**PP:** lol now who’s talking to ghosts, eh, slugger?

 **PP:** oooh I’m sure there’s a song for that

 **PP:** ghostbusters?

 **PP:** Ooooooooooooooo budda da da dah duh.

 **PP:** Ghost! Busters!!

 **PP:** lololololol

 **PP:** nice

Wh—

What on _earth_?

**PP:** NICE

 **PP:** oooh I _miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight_ be high.

 **PP:** eheheheheheheEHEHEHEHEHE

 **PP:** nice

W—was he okay? This—This wasn’t--

Okay, Johnny had heard, he’d _heard_ alright, that Spiderman had, over the last decade or so gone a little…sideways.

A little twisted.

People said that he talked in riddles, mostly to himself. He allegedly sang and chanted and laughed a lot too.

Again: to himself.

In the past several years of being snatched out of midair right before a terrible and explosive landing, Johnny hadn’t experienced much of that so-called personality shift. Spiderman had always been in deadly-focus mode then, at least until he was sure that Johnny was okay. Once he’d dumped Johnny off somewhere safe and had inspected him for damage, he usually made a wisecrack of some kind and jabbed fingers into Johnny’s soft spots before taking off, chaotic as ever, into the night.

Johnny hardly had the time or space to get a word in edgewise in those moments, which was unfortunate, because they were pretty much the only times that he’d interacted with Pete in the last, oh, five or so years?

But like, maybe the folks are twitter were right. Maybe something really had changed in Peter, right in front of everyone’s eyes.

Or maybe he really was just deliriously high.

**PP:** HEY its raining

 **PP:** Ironic no? Coulda used that exactly uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 6 days and 2 hours ago, couldn’t we?

 **PP:** lololol its okay we can sing now. Did you want to go first? No, no, I insist. Okay well if you say so

Johnny blinked. He had to say something, right?

But what the hell was he supposed to say to a spider person on opioids?

**PP:** I’m singin’ in the rain 🎶 just singin’ in the rain 🎶

 **PP:** what a wonderful feeling I’m HAPPY again!! 🎶

 **PP:** AHDADFAASDFADSFSADF CAN YOU FUCKIN IMAGINE?? Lolololololol

Oh, Peter.

That wasn’t funny, friend. Like, not even a little.

Johnny laid himself down onto his side and reached for a few pillows. He arranged them to support his back and curled up as best as he could around the blue light from the phone.

He didn’t have anything to say anymore. He only had aches. Aches of so many different varieties.

Muscle aches. Bone aches.

Heartaches.

You too, huh, Pete?

**PP:** sry I probs sound a liiiittle bit manic. It’s probably because I’m hysterical.

 **PP:** Get it?

 **PP:** HYSTERICAL

 **PP:** ahhahahahaha

 **PP:** fuck ouch there are internal stitches

Johnny huffed a laugh and pulled the edge of the duvet up from the side of the bed up and over his shoulder. He laid down completely.

**PP:** funny it’s been like years since we saw each other you know that? And the thing that brings us back into orbit is an explosion. Very astronomical of us, don’t you think?

No, pal. Not at all.

There was subtle and then there was whatever Peter had going on.

Johnny couldn’t help but smile.

On the one hand, this person texting him lacked all of the things that he remembered of Peter. The serious, lowered brows, the piercing accent, the softness— _god, the softness_.

Peter used to be so soft--pliable and warm underneath Johnny’s fingers.

This person—this Peter--wasn’t that. But he was just as flighty and guarded as he’d always been, and Johnny saw him hiding behind all these blips of songs and terrible jokes. He saw the tentative palm being held out his way.

The barely there tremble of Peter’s bottom lip.

He saw him.

He missed him.

He missed him so much.

**PP:** hey are you as banged up as me, Torchy? Or did you only order frying pan, no fire?

 **JS:** you’re such a fucking moron

Johnny flopped his head down onto his pillow and tried not to beam like an idiot when the next text came in.

**PP:** EXCUSE ME???

 **PP:** I’M the moron? You fuckin’ DINOSAURED me. I coulda been a fossil cuz of you. Listen to yourself for FUCK’S sake. I’M the moron. What planet are you living on? I tell you what, as soon as I can bend these fuckin’ elbows its OVER for you, Candlestick. You hear me?

Johnny laughed so hard tears sprang to his eyes. His muscles spasmed.

It didn’t matter.

The ice on the surface had broken after five long years of stillness.

Welcome back, Peter Parker. Welcome home, Spidey.


	3. all my clothes

Days of texting and now Peter was sitting here at 7pm, covered in burns, with an unresponsive Human Torch.

The _nerve_.

Whatever, fuck him. There was always Youtube to drift away to. Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds wouldn’t let him down like this.

The burns healed. The drugs were finished.

Peter was vibrating for stimulation outside of the 6000 bootlegged musicals he’d binged under May’s orders to leave his bed on pain of death.

He was shimmering. He was glittering.

He was _Spiderman_.

May sighed and told him not to overdue it as she handed him back his ring of keys and let him loose again onto the world.

Her only stipulation was for him to take a jacket. He took the one Wade had lent him nearly a year ago.

Wade was sitting up high on his building, leaning over the edge of the roof and working on something in his hands. He wasn’t wearing his suit.

There was an old instinct to look away, but Peter forced it to relax.

He and Wade hadn’t needed that kind of decorum for years now. He could read Peter’s mask like a book anyways.

Peter swung up high and landed as quietly as he could. He waved at the feathered stragglers up there, trying to find nesting materials out of old aluminum beer cans and soggy cigarette wrappers. They waved him along and he crept up behind Wade for a sneak attack.

Wade didn’t so much as twitch when Peter threw arms around his neck from behind.

He just chuckled.

“The kraken’s been unleashed,” he said.

Peter climbed up onto his shoulders and leaned over his head to see his face.

“’M back,” he said. “Didya miss me?”

“Always, kid.”

“ _Nice_.”

Wade huffed another laugh.

He was sad. Wuh-oh.

“Negative?” Peter asked.

Wade’s hand came up and rubbed at the top of his mask in an awkward attempt to ruffle his hair.

“You guys could always adopt,” Peter pointed out quietly.

“Ain’t no one in their right mind gonna clear us for that, Pete,” Wade said. “It’s alright. She’s startin’ to come around to the facts of the matter.”

This sucked. It always sucked. But it sucked especially for Wade and Ness.

“You could steal one,” Peter said. “I won’t tell nobody.”

Wade snorted.

“Nah,” he said. “Ain’t the same. Anyways, we got you, kid. And Russ—even if she don’t wanna admit she frets over him, too.”

Peter laid his cheek on top of Wade’s head. He was doing his accounts on his phone again. Peter never understood how he could. He needed a fullscreen at minimum to even begin to understand Excel docs.

“You’re already a great dad, Wade,” Peter said quietly.

Wade hummed.

“I dunno about Ness as a mom, but she’s a great weird aunt,” Peter said.

That one got him a smirk.

“Get outta here,” Wade said, tilting to the side and dumping Peter off his shoulders onto the concrete. “I ain’t your daddy, boy.”

Peter grinned.

That was better.

“You could be,” he teased. “I can call you ‘Pops.’”

“Hush, you. I ain’t that old.”

“Surrogate-Sodaman.”

Wade snickered.

“Post-Dad-Uncle-Death Grips,” Peter offered him.

“ _Get outta here_.”

“Are you sure? You might miss me.”

Wade cackled this time and the air around him seemed to lose some of its weight.

Wade had to look after Ness who, Peter had to say, was as close to a mom as a lady with no kids could get.

She’d been a little awkward in the beginning of things, but since then—since Peter and Mr. High and Mighty FireFist and most recently Red’s so-called ‘Nightmare’ of an apprentice, she’d gotten much better at reading young men for their various levels of stupidity.

Ness wouldn’t die alone, Wade would make sure of that. And when she was ready to go—hopefully with laugh lines dug deep into her cheeks and the corners of her cat-like eyes—she would be surrounded by kids from all over New York, Peter was positive.

He got a text message from her ten minutes later screaming and demanding to know why he hadn’t come inside. She claimed that she was fine. She was just going to get a fourth cat and that would be that.

Peter beamed at the message.

Wade was going to see it and lose his damn mind.

Amazing.

God, it was nice to be out in the sunlight again.

Hell’s Kitchen was bustling with activity. There was a streetfair going on down there, and Nelson & Murdock had been roped into setting up a stall by their third and most tenacious member.

She referred to Peter only as a ‘masked menace,’ because, she claimed, the alliteration spoke to her soul.

She’d made a spinning wheel of different prizes and had all the merch out for some serious advertising.

Did Nelson & McDuffie & That Other Guy need it? No, probably not. But they were pillars of the community, man. And they had what none of the other law firms in the area did: fresh, handsome meat.

Peter said ‘hi’ to Sam on the way in through the door and Sam lit up and waved at him, only to drop his whole box of paperwork right onto the office floor. He shouted for no one to move, he had this.

He was a cutey.

They fooled around. Sam didn’t ask questions, and was always careful to leave without bumping into May, regardless of how many times May tried to orchestrate such run-ins.

Sam didn’t look anything like blonde hair or blue eyes and his laugh was something else entirely. He had barely the slightest accent and he’d never asked who the girl on Peter’s lockscreen was.

He was mostly wrapped up in his own life. In Blindspot. In Chinatown. His mom and his sister and work. The last Peter spoke to him, the only thing Sam had been interested in talking about was how to leave a cult.

He’d pinned Peter to the bed and had asked him maybe an inch from his face if counseling was truly the only way through this. Red didn’t think so, but the internet was contradicting him at every turn. Sam needed more data.

Peter hadn’t had an answer for him and had said so, and Sam had abandoned him to go back to his phone, in search of more useful information.

They hadn’t fucked that time. Clearly there were more pressing matters at hand.

“You got a minute?” Peter asked, leaning on the ledge of the window that separated the reception area from the rest of the waiting room.

Sam popped back up with his arms full of loose paper. He blinked, then turned back to squint at the clock.

“Yeah, probably,” he said.

“No _way_.”

“Way,” Peter said. “Not sure how to proceed.”

“It’s Johnny Storm, Webs,” Sam said. “Clearly the next step is proposing.”

Peter choked on a snort.

“ _Samuel_.”

“No, no. Hear me out—”

Peter rolled his eyes and set his chin in his palm, while Sam turned to face him on the smoking-stoop at the back of the building.

“Okay, so first, think of financial security,” Sam said.

This fuckin’ guy. He was the last of the romantics, truly. If he’d been smoking a cigarette, Peter would have stolen it right out of his lips.

“I’m thinkin’,” Peter said. “Oh, what’s that? What’s happening? Oh, it’s almost like I _don’t need a man_ , Sammy. This is emotional. Stick with me on emotional.”

Sam sneered at him.

“Everyone needs a man,” he said. “And you’re an _artist_ , Peter. You need a patron.”

Peter sniffed.

“You tellin’ me to become an escort?” he asked.

“That’s a ‘client,’ get your shit straight.”

“Sorry, I can’t I’m—”

“Not funny, I know. It’s a travesty,” Sam sighed. “No, listen. Who else have you told about this?”

HHHHHH.

“Wade probably knows through his psychic powers,” Peter said.

Sam sucked his teeth and rubbed his knuckles against his neck.

“That doesn’t count,” He said. “Anyone else?”

“It’s not like I’ve got friends, Sam.”

“You got loads of friends. You make friends everywhere you go.”

Mm. So what if he did? It behooved people like Peter to charm every body they came across. But being friends and being _friends_ was something different.

“You told Miranda?” Sam asked.

God, no. Now that was a good thought.

“I know,” Sam said. “I’ve got clients waiting. Clear out, asshole.”

Peter cocked an eyebrow at him and immediately got a finger in his face.

“Not presently an escort, but also the longer you stay, the more likely I am to talk about my mother. So go. I have work to do.”

Righty-o, champ. Message received.

“—so obviously, I’m like, what do I even _do_ , you know? I’m a week behind in this damn class and I can’t get RENT out of my head, I don’t need this bullshit takin’ up any more real estate—”

“On your left is Stark Tower, the home of Stark Industries,” Miranda said over Peter’s nattering. Her collection of tourists appeared to have become a gaggle of confused chickens.

Peter didn’t have time for them, though. He took the hat off the wee one in his arms and put it on his head on top of his mask, which earned him a shriek and some excited bouncing.

“--And then I heard from someone who shall not be named that there was some kind of affair going on?” He asked.

Miranda’s face snapped towards him.

“You haven’t heard of the affair, Spidey?” she gasped. “Man, you gotta get out from under that rock.”

The tourists’ heads all went to her in shock.

“My arms couldn’t bend for a _week_ ,” Peter said. “It’s not my fault. I was like, tied to the rock.”

The heads bounced back towards him.

“That’s not an excuse,” Miranda snapped.

“It’s great excuse,” Peter argued. “Probably the best excuse.”

“You—folks, if you look way up at the 45th floor of the tower, you can see Dr. Bruce Banner’s labs. Some people with especially good eyesight have told me that they’ve seen him working in there—just grab a tabloid, Webs. They’ll tell you the full dirt and nothing but the dirt, so help you god,” Miranda hissed.

Peter heaved a sigh.

“I don’t _want_ to read the tabloids,” he said. 

The kid in his arms pawed at one of his eyes. He made it blink and half of the tour group gasped.

They were so easy.

Miranda groaned.

“Guys, ignore him,” she said. “He does this as a cry for attention.”

“I mean, _obviously_ ,” Peter said. “But you’re the only one who understands me.”

Miranda rolled her whole head with her eyes.

“Get friends that aren’t birds already,” she said.

“I have friends that aren’t birds, she’s—”

“ _No cats, either_.”

“Well, I’ll _never_ ,” Peter huffed. “Are you going to help or not?”

He caught the hand of the first grader who came up to poke at his suit as if to make sure he was real. The kid’s mom scrambled forward and grabbed both the munchkin’s hands to pull him back as if Peter had fleas or something.

“What do you want me to say, Webs?” Miranda snapped. “You and Torchy have always had your thing.”

“Well, not _always_ ,” Peter said. “I mean the last time we talked in like, full sentences on both sides was, uhhhhhhhh I dunno. Four? Five years back?”

Miranda stared at him. The tourists did, too.

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold up,” Miranda said. “You’re telling me the last time you talked was _years_ ago? You—You caught him out of mid air like _last year_.”

“Okay, I see that, but he wasn’t conscious, so it doesn’t count. And all the times before that have been me, you know, talking _at_ him.”

Miranda’s gaze didn’t let up. The red hat she wore on top of her braids seemed to get redder with her irritation.

“Then go talk to him,” she sounded out slowly. “It’s all over the papers; everyone knows he cheated on that—”

“MM. Yeah, see, people keep telling me that, but here’s the thing—Johnny doesn’t cheat,” Peter interrupted. “Like. Ever. Ever, ever. He’s like fuckin’ penguin. He wants to mate for life—don’t ask, kid, it’s not worth it—”

“How do you even know that?” Miranda demanded, tourists forgotten. “You can’t know that unless— _unless_ —”

Wow. Look at the time. Ma’am, you really shouldn’t let known vigilantes hold your children like this. Yes, take her, she’s darling.

“Oh, no, you don’t.”

Peter was choking. He was supposed to be running and he was choking.

He knew he shouldn’t have made the suit stretchy. That was a terrible idea. He was taking this material back to the drawing board and—

“Fess up. You guys were involved, weren’t you? _Weren’t you?_ ”

HHHHHHHNG.

It was complicated, Miranda. It all happened at once and he got sucked into it without reading the terms and conditions just like that one time with the pyramid scheme and they’d both been stupid little selfish brats and—

“Webs, I cannot believe my ears. You never _told_ me? I should have known. You always stop singing when someone talks about him.”

Well, it wasn’t the kind of thing that came up in casual convers—wait, go back to that last part.

Miranda was smirking at him. God, civilians were the worst. Peter should stop talking to them categorically, it never ended well for him.

“I’m busy,” Peter informed her and all her tourists.

“And here I thought you were mourning,” Miranda said. “I guess it’s finally time to move on, huh?”

Disgusting.

“Actually, I was thinking about redoing the whole suit in black,” he said stiffly.

The knowing look in Miranda’s eye was doing no one any favors.

“I just want to know what to do next,” he admitted “Like, should I keep texting? Is that weird? We both know I’m so _weird_. GOD. I’m so torn up over this, it’s not even a big deal, is it?”

“It seems like it is,” Miranda said. “Also seems like you’re just lonely. Go get laid. Life will reorder itself.”

Hm.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Peter said.

“Great. Leave already. You’re making my tours popular. That’s the last thing I need.”

Ugh. Fine.

The final straw was him crashing into art history at 4pm and finding everyone staring at him. He brushed it off as his usual radiance attracting attention until the teach came in and froze on his way up to the front of the room.

“Parker, you’re out of the hospital already?” he asked.

Whoops.

“Sure am,” Peter said brightly. “Modern medicine works miracles.”

He got a blink that took two years to finish.

“Are you sure you’re okay to be here?” the teach asked. “I could email you an alternate assignment.”

No, no. It wasn’t a problem. Peter could pretend to have aching skin. He had loads of experience with it.

He resumed digging out his ancient laptop and had just gotten everything organized to his liking when something touched his hand. He jumped and jerked his head to the side only to find blue eyes staring into his.

Brett-Barry-Brendon was in this class. Peter had forgotten. He smiled weakly at the guy and got a wrinkled brow in return.

Brett-Brendon took away his hand. Peter resisted the urge to stuff his own under the table and wipe it on his pants.

“Talk after?” Brett-Brendon whispered.

Peter’s stomach dropped.

_Blau, blau, blau sind alle meine Kleider._

_Blau, blau, blau_.

“You didn’t answer my texts.”

 _Is alles was ich habe_. _Darum liebe ich alles was so blue ist--_

“I thought you were dead, man. That’s not cool.”

_Was glaubst du wer du bist?_

“Dude, at least answer me. Come on. Why do you keep pretending that nothing happened between us? Am I nothing to you?”

Yes.

No.

Yes.

The clothes song wouldn’t stop playing in Peter’s head. Over and over and over on a loop. Falling and rising.

“Peter? Jesus. What’s your fuckin’ problem? Do you think it’s cool to just ignore people for years? Are you embarrassed? Are you not out? What’s your deal?”

These words were familiar. And they were even coming from blonde hair and blue eyes.

They made the music get louder.

“Oh my god. Say something, already.”

Peter tipped his head down.

“I don’t even know your name,” he said quietly.

The room turned to night. Their breath puffed into clouds. There was light, but it came from an old buzzing neon sign.

“You’re a fucking _monster_.”

Peter closed his eyes. The music got louder. The buzzing did, too, alongside this pat-pat-patting sound. The sound of moths throwing their soft bodies into the old glass of that neon sign.

“You’re a monster. I’m don’t know why I bothered. You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You’re _selfish_ , Peter Parker.”

There was scuffing. The sound of a door creaking open and then slamming. The shoes shuffled away from the door, out of range. Peter leaned back against the table in the dark room.

“ _Blau, blau, blau, sind alle meine Kleider_ ,” he whispered. “ _Blau, blau, blau, ist alles was ich hab._ ”


	4. brass polish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “MJ, I’m suffering. Can you be gleeful like an octave lower?” Johnny huffed.
> 
> “Sure can,” MJ said. “Watch me, here I go.”
> 
> Johnny regretted ever helping her break into her own dorm in college. He never should have picked up that butter knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mentions of Lyja and her whole manipulation/emotional abuse situation below. Also warnings for abuse and bullying (homophobia and anti-Semitism). Please do what you need to to keep yourselves safe.

**JS:** hey

 **JS:** why did you stop talking?

 **JS:** sorry I fell asleep, and then I got busy. The kids are doing homeschool right now and Sue and Reed and Ben are taking all calls.

 **JS:** hello?

 **JS:** Come back. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging.

 **JS:** it was purely logistical I mean

 **PP:** hi johnny. am I selfish?

 **JS:** wh

 **JS:** WHAT? Why would you even ask that? Did someone tell you that?

 **JS:** Who fucking told you that?

 **JS:** sorry sorry that was aggressive

 **JS:** I mean no. No, you’re not selfish. I don’t know if you know how to be selfish.

 **PP:** I do

 **JS:** WAIT wait come back. Who told you that?

 **PP:** some guy

 **JS:** what guy?

 **JS:** why would he say that? Are you okay?

 **PP:** maybe

 **JS:** would it help to talk?

 **PP:** I think in music.

 **JS:** ?? what?

 **PP:** idk when it started happening but its not always good music.

 **PP:** it can be bad music. and repetitive things. I only know refrains. I hear them in my head all the time. And when I get nervous it gets really loud and sometimes I can’t hear other people talking. It fills all the space and it makes people even more angry.

 **JS:** did that happen today?

 **PP:** yes

 **JS:** is it happening right now?

 **PP:** yes

 **JS:** what song is in your head right now?

 **PP:** the monster mash

 **JS:** why that one?

 **PP:** because it’s the only one with the word monster in it I can think of

“Hey, we’re home. Are the kids asleep?”

“Johnny?”

His heart was beating too fast. He needed to calm down.

“Woah, kid, hey. What’s going on?”

Too many voices. He needed to calm down.

“Give him some space.”

The gym was dark and quiet and Johnny didn’t disturb it by turning on any lights. He used his phone screen to help him find a bench press in the corner. He shoved it back against the wall, then crawled up past the double bars to its head. He sat with his back flat against drywall and his legs splayed over the plastic-y padding.

His heart was still racing. Blood was rushing in his ears.

He needed to calm down, but that was nigh impossible with Peter’s text sitting right there on his screen.

He let out a shuddering breath and told himself that this wasn’t his battle to fight.

**JS:** did someone call you a monster?

 **PP:** yes

His hands wanted to sink and tear.

He forced himself to take another breath.

**JS:** why would they do that?

Peter didn’t answer. He wouldn’t. Johnny had to come at this from a different angle.

**JS:** where are you?

 **PP:** dunno

Fuck.

**JS:** don’t know or don’t want to be found?

Nothing. Christ.

**JS:** sorry I’m just mad

 **PP:** mad at what?

 **JS:** at whoever called you that. You’re not a monster.

 **PP:** ah

 **PP:** don’t be mad at him.

Typical Peter. Absolutely typical.

**PP:** he didn’t do anything. I did.

 **JS:** what did you do then?

He waited a good five minutes in the dark, flexing his fingers.

**PP:** I don’t want to say

Pft. How bad could it be, Parker?

**JS:** what, did you steal his girl? Key his car?

 **PP:** no johnny

 **JS:** did you murder his mom? Did you eat fries out of a traffic cone again?

 **PP:** no it’s nothing like that

 **JS:** Was it a war crime??

 **PP:** he liked me, alright?

He—He’d what? He’d—

Peter? This guy liked Peter?

No. No, ignore that rising tide. That didn’t matter.

**JS:** what is this, middle school? It doesn’t matter if he liked you, if you don’t want him back then he has to deal with that. That’s doesn’t make you a bad person.

 **PP:** you don’t understand

 **JS:** I do, actually. Believe it or not.

 **PP:** what? No. it was just a one-night thing

Oh.

**PP:** I left. I was upset. I guess I thought he could tell.

Oh, _fuck_.

**JS:** he didn’t rape you did he?

 **PP:** no. it wasn’t like that. It was just a bad time.

 **PP:** But I thought that he understood that it was a one-time thing. I went about my life, Johnny. We’ve had multiple classes together and I never talked to him again and he’s been right there, like, feet away ever since. Probably trying to understand why the fuck I left him like that.

 **PP:** He probably thought it was his fault. And I never told him anything different. And he was texting me last week and I ignored it.

The familiarity was closing in on Johnny like the darkness around him. Anger seeped out of his fingertips. His heart throbbed in a different kind of way.

He knew what this guy felt like all of the sudden—god, he knew it. He’d been sitting in the same tidepool not days ago.

What was he supposed to say now? ‘Fuck that dude?’ Like, _no_. Johnny _was_ that dude, sittin’ pretty, waiting for Peter, for Frankie Raye, for any number of people to come home from war and catch him waiting for them in an old window in the sun.

Fffffffffffuck.

**JS:** that’s a lot man

 **PP:** I know.

 **JS:** I don’t know how to deal with that.

 **PP:** I can’t tell him why.

 **JS:** what do you mean? Why not?

 **PP:** it’ll tie me to Spidey.

Dude. That sucked _hardcore_. For everyone.

**JS:** this is shit

 **PP:** mmmmmhm

 **JS:** okay but just because you can’t tell him doesn’t make you a monster

 **PP:** lol

That was not an appropriate answer, Spiderboy.

**JS:** I mean that.

 **PP:** thanks

 **PP:** hey do you still have Rufus?

Johnny felt his shoulders sag.

**JS:** Are you serious? Yes we still have Rufus. He’s older than Frankie. All Val does is piss off that cat.

 **PP:** aww

 **JS:** do you still have Voidcat?

 **PP:** yeah she threw every bottle in the bathroom into the tub the other day.

 **JS:** amazing.

Johnny sighed. He was tired now.

**JS:** are you okay, man?

 **PP:** yeah I’m fine. Before everything went to shit I saw my friends today. It was nice. Haven’t been allowed out in ages.

 **JS:** I’m glad to hear that, man.

 **PP:** are you okay?

A great fucking question. Johnny had been asking himself that for weeks now and he didn’t feel any closer to an answer.

**JS:** so-so

 **PP:** why are people telling me that you cheated on your girl? I thought you were a penguin.

Christ. Here we go. He lifted his fingers.

**PP:** or a skink. Did you know that skinks are monogamous too?

 **PP:** And barn owls. Seahorses. Some wolves.

 **JS:** I didn’t cheat on anyone.

 **PP:** yeah that’s what I figured.

Wow. What was with that tone, man?

**JS:** It’s a long story, but basically this gal I used to see barged back into my life when I was least expecting it and announced to the world that she was pregnant with my kid.

 **PP:** I

 **JS:** yeah

 **PP:** wow

 **JS:** I know

 **PP:** that’s a very you-type of problem. I take it, it wasn’t your kid

 **JS:** wasn’t even a fucking kid. Some kind of egg. A weapon. Anyways. My gal stuck it through until it was too much for her. I don’t blame her. She apologized for going, but really it was for the best. We were just having fun anyways, it wasn’t anything too deep.

 **PP:** still a bummer

Pft. Yeah Parker, a ‘bummer,’ definitely not a rehashing of years of Lyja’s trauma.

Whatever. Peter didn’t—He didn’t know, did he? He hadn’t been around through all that bullshit.

**PP:** oh hey, sorry I’m getting a call. Thanks for chatting. It helped a lot. I owe you one.

And that was that. Conversation over.

Johnny leaned back as far as he could go, as awkward as that was for his spine. He let his hands go loose and let his phone fall onto his stomach.

His eyes had adjusted somewhat to the low light in the room. The lines between the ceiling tiles looked teal with the artificial phone light.

He closed his eyes.

Everyone was waiting for him when he emerged from the gym. He tried to play it off, but Sue’s eyes weren’t having it. She shooed the kids off to bed. Gave Val the cat as an incentive. Reed took the initiative to whack at Ben’s arm until he shuffled off with him to the lab, no doubt to sit and speculate on what had happened over plates full of metal nails and tweezers.

That left just Johnny with Sue.

He sighed and sat down at the table. It wasn’t softer than the bench press.

Sue sat down next to him.

“Go on,” she said.

Sue had always thought that Peter was hiding shit from the world. It wasn’t that she’d never trusted him—she’d always wanted to trust him—but Johnny could look back now and see her trying to find that line between supporting Johnny in a relationship doomed to fail and protecting him from the inevitable. She’d been relieved, Johnny thought, when things had slowly drifted apart.

She wasn’t relieved now.

Now, she chewed a lip and brought a foot up onto the seat of the chair so that she could hug her leg to her chest.

“People’ve been saying that Spidey’s been out of sorts for months,” she said. “The Avengers have been offering him jobs for ages, but he keeps skirting them with no explanation for why. Sounds like he’s still going through whatever it is.”

Johnny leaned his cheek on his palm.

“Am I trying to use Peter as a rebound?” he asked Sue flat out.

Sue sighed.

“Maybe?” she said. “Not sure. Might just be old feelings, Johnny.”

Mmm. It felt like a rebound—this kind of frustration, that is. Or maybe it was just him trying to find solace and companionship in someone as fucked up as himself.

“Might be guilt,” Sue offered him. “You did burn the bejesus out of him.”

Johnny resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It was obviously guilt. He didn’t need help identifying that part of this equation. 

“Are you jealous?”

Mmm.

“Of this guy? Blue-eyed blond. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

Mmmmm.

Perhaps if he just laid very still on this table, these horrible words would stop coming into existence.

“It makes sense to be jealous,” Sue said. “I mean—is it healthy? No. But it makes sense. Sounds like Peter’s developed a type.”

And it’s ‘every blond human but Jonathan Storm,’ yeah, thanks, Sue.

“I can’t save him. I think that’s what’s pissing me off,” Johnny admitted. “He won’t let anyone save him, even though it’s _my_ fault that he nearly died the other day.”

Sue hummed in sympathy.

“So it has nothing to do with being jealous,” She said.

Johnny forced his fist to relax. He heard Sue huff.

“Right,” she said.

Whatever.

“Look, I don’t know how to fix this. Sounds to me like Peter’s gotta sit with the consequences of what he’s done. Just because he didn’t mean to hurt someone doesn’t mean he didn’t. And like, _should_ he be guilty about it? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s for him to decide, not you.”

Johnny stared at the back of the couch with eyes that refused to stop glaring. Sue was right. Peter had to figure it out on his own.

He flinched when a hand laid itself on his hair, then relaxed as Sue dragged her fingers through it.

“The last thing you two need is a double rebound,” she said quietly. “But you’re not gonna find what Lyja took from you in Peter, Johnny.”

He took in a deep breath and sighed it out.

“I know,” he said.

“It sucks to be lonely.”

“I know.”

“Go talk to MJ.”

Yeah, alright.

“Who’s ‘PP?’” MJ asked with a spoon crammed in her mouth. She stepped out of range before Johnny could take his phone back. “Is this another dormmate I can’t remember?”

She whacked Johnny’s arm on his second swipe for the phone, claiming that she wasn’t done.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I said only the last stuff from the last day.”

Mary Jane’s green eyes flicked up and she sneered at him around the spoon.

“Everything matters,” she said. “I’m an actress. Everything is inspir—Wait. _Jonathan Storm, is that who I think it is_?”

Nope, nope, nope.

The spoon came out and was nigh-thrown into the sink. The phone was snatched out of Johnny’s reach.

“ _Johnny_. You _bastard_.”

“Light of my life, spark of my soul, that is not yours to keep,” Johnny said. “I don’t want to break you like a mirror. We both don’t want me to break you like a mirror.”

Mary Jane ignored him and pressed a hand into her heart. She was approaching couch-climbing levels of drama. She was going to find Arcturus and present him to the living room like Simba again if this continued for much longer.

“Who _is_ he then?” She demanded. “Come on, trade. Name for phone.”

Hhhhhhhng.

“Name for phone. Come on, Stormy.”

HHHHHNG.

“It _is_ who I think it is, isn’t it?” Mary Jane needled, leaning down to jiggle her shoulder against Johnny’s own. “Are you _blushing_?”

He snatched the phone. MJ let him have it. She cackled.

“It’s all true,” she said. “Ladies and gents, you heard it here first. The Human Torch really is fucking the _Amazing_ —”

“It’s not funny, MJ,” Johnny cut her off.

The mood in the room took a serious nose dive. He felt bad about the tone.

“I—sorry. It’s just. It’s not funny,” he mumbled.

MJ stayed frozen by the couch for a long moment. Then she sauntered around it and fell into it. She melted into the cushions like mercury in a cupped palm. She slipped down until her back was the only part touching the fabric and, smirking, she laced her fingers on her chest, under her chin.

“Go on,” she said.

“I’d rather eat shit, thanks,” Johnny sighed.

“You know you want to—not eat shit, I mean. I meant ‘talk,’ although maybe you want to eat shit, too. I don’t know your life.”

Thanks, girl. That was _very_ helpful.

“He’s hot as fuck, Johnny, no one’s blaming you.”

Johnny sighed and sunk into the other side of the couch. He wished he could keep sinking into it until it devoured him and absorbed his consciousness into its couch-y aura.

“I’m not fucking him. I just—I knew him,” he admitted. “When we were kids.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god, so you two were…?”

Johnny sighed.

“OH MY GOD.”

“MJ, I’m suffering. Can you be gleeful like an octave lower?”

“Sure can,” MJ said. “Watch me, here I go.”

Johnny regretted ever helping her break into her own dorm in college. He never should have picked up that butter knife.

“Heeeeeeey. What’s with the face?”

“I’m miserable, what else is it for?” Johnny said.

“Miserable because you’re playing rebound chicken with the hottest dude on the Eastern seaboard or--? Oh. Is he stupid?”

If _only_.

“Damn. It’s always easier when they’re not as smart as you.”

Big.

Sigh.

“Johnnyyyyyy, tell me what’s wrong.”

You know what? Fine. She was the one who’d asked.

“Oh.”

Johnny hugged Rufus a smidge tighter than he probably should have. It was fine, though, Rufus had officially forsaken his give-a-shit after Val was born. He took what he could get.

“That’s…a lot,” MJ said. She reached over and rubbed Rufus’s ears and he splayed out into an even further-reaching cat puddle.

“Maybe we should stop talking,” Johnny sighed.

“Oh, yeah, no. You should definitely stop talking.”

“Okay, but counterpoint,” Johnny said. “If we aren’t talking about shit like this, then we’ll never talk again. He won’t need me for anything.”

Silence.

MJ was making a bad face. A terrible face. The kind of face that came before a reckoning and/or her standing on Johnny’s bed in minimal clothing, beating the shit out of him with two pillows.

“We talked about this,” she said dangerously.

“It’s not like that,” Johnny said, holding up the cat as a shield.

“ _Oh, it isn’t_?”

God. If MJ ever became a supervillain, the whole world was fucked. Johnny would be killed instantly by her laser eyes.

“It’s not,” Johnny pleaded. “It’s like—I dunno. I just. I fucked it up when we were kids. I didn’t even notice us drifting apart. I just—I just let him go, but despite that he’s never let me down. He still catches me. This was the first time in like, ten years that he hasn’t caught me. And like, I dunno. I guess I feel bad because there’s never been a chance for me to repay him for all the shit he’s done for me. He’s always there for everyone— _everyone_ , MJ, I cannot stress this enough--but it’s like he doesn’t have anyone there for him when he’s the one about ready to break.”

There was a long pause. MJ’s green eyes flicked all around the room before she rubbed her lips together and brought them back to focus on Johnny.

“You’re not a bad friend if your other friend hides shit from you, Johnny,” she said, “That’s not a reflection on you, that’s a reflection on them.”

It took a moment for it to sink in.

“He does lie a lot,” Johnny admitted.

“Sounds like it.”

“I think he lies to himself.”

“I see why you two are so desperate to fuck.”

Wow. They weren’t--

“Hey, birds of a feather—”

WOW.

“We don’t talk about my trauma, Mary Jane,” he spat. “Remember?”

“Ah, my bad. I forgot.”

“ _God_.”

Arcturus wriggled free and abandoned the two of them sulking on the couch.

“Okay, so like, what’re you gonna do then?” MJ asked the ceiling.

“Fuck if I know,” Johnny told it, too.

“Maybe stop having long, heartfelt text conversations with the finest ass in the city? Maybe tell him to seek a trauma counselor and antidepressants? Maybe say ‘lol’ the next time he talks to you so that he understands that you’re not a place to lay his troubles?”

Mmm. Not likely.

“You know what I like about you, Storm? You’re always honest.”

“Thanks, I try. Do you think I should like, push him on it? Is that overstepping?”

“Oh, totally overstepping and definitely feeding into your own self-destruction,” MJ said. “But I mean, someone probably should. Or maybe, just maybe, he’s actually testing the water and trying to bat-signal to you that he wants to achieve emotional release by bouncing on your—”

“MJ, have I told you about the kids that live here?” Johnny asked. “Because I recall a moment in the not-so-distant past where we had some kind of conversation about kids living here--”

His phone chirped and suddenly nothing mattered.

MJ stared at him. He stared back.

**PP:** hey sorry about the other day. That was A Lot. DP diagnosed me with a severe need for a bath and a better sense of humor, so I’m better now. Just wanted to say sorry. And thanks. You’re a good guy, Johnny. We should talk more often.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

“Awwww, look. He gets his self-care advice from an assassin,” MJ crooned.

Shut up, MJ. 

**JS:** hey sorry I’m with my friend. You good?

 **PP:** Dude you have friends????

 **JS:** uh, yeah? Do you not?

 **PP:** AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 **PP:** Of course I have friends. Every pigeon in this town knows me as Snackman. You were there for the beginning of that illustrious career, did you forget??

Spidey, _no_.

“Oh my god, he’s so lonely,” MJ said right by Johnny’s ear. He nearly smacked her in the face.

“This is what I’m talkin’ about,” Johnny moaned. “This is _typical_ Pete—Spiderman.”

MJ blinked at him once.

“Pete?”

Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

“Pete?? Pe…ter?”

Fuck Johnny’s life.

“PETER??”

“I’m trying to suffer here, woman,” Johnny snapped.

“Peter?? His name’s fuckin’ _Peter_? Spidey. Honey. Baby. I’m sorry for this wound.”

For the love of—

“I’m _so_ sorry, you poor thing. Your parents ruined everything for you from the start.”

“MJ, his name isn’t import—”

“What’s his last one?”

Johnny loved his friends.

Johnny loved his friends.

Johnny loved his—

“ _Johnny_. You know I won’t tell. I’ve got so many of your secrets in this here heart and how many times have I been kidnapped, hm? How many secrets have they gotten out of me??”

Johnny glared at the ceiling.

“Hmmmm??” MJ purred.

Fuck it.

“Parker.”

“PETER PARK—.”

Johnny frowned harder at the ceiling, then twitched his head to tell MJ to her face to keep her voice down, but he didn’t make it before the pillow came down _hard_. The next one was brutal. The one after that was entirely uncalled for and—girl, what the fuck?

“Stop hittin’ me, what’s your problem?” He swore.

To his surprise, the onslaught didn’t stop. He found himself having to wrench one of the pillows out of MJ’s hand and, after a moment of grabbing, he caught and immobilized her other wrist.

“What’s the matter with you?” he snarled.

The fury didn’t last. MJ’s green eyes were more fiery that Johnny could ever hope to be.

“You’re lying,” she said. “It’s not fucking funny. You’re lying. How _dare you_.”

Johnny didn’t understand. His brain kept trying to make him, but it kept coming up with empty brain-palms and shrugs.

“I’m not lying. Why would I lie to you? When have I ever lied to you—successfully, I mean?” he asked.

Wait. Wait, no, no. No, MJ, don’t do that. Don’t go limp. What—

What was happening?

“You’re not lying?” she asked in a small voice.

Johnny pushed himself up to sitting.

“I’m not,” he said gently. “I’d never. Why would I lie to you?”

He didn’t expect the tear. The one after it made his whole face fall open.

He didn’t understand. Peter was just some—

“He’s my fuckin’ _neighbor_ , Johnny,” MJ gasped. “He’s been—he’s been— for 12 years.”

Twelve—

“No, that’s impossible,” Johnny said. “He lives—”

“In Queens,” MJ hiccupped. “He’s—tell me you’re lying. _Tell me you’re lying_.”

He couldn’t. He really couldn’t. And he’d never wished more that he could in the face of MJ’s slowly running mascara and thick voice.

He—he didn’t understand.

MJ pushed off the couch and curled into a ball on the floor.

She wept.

She honest to god _wept_. Her shoulders shook and she gasped and raised her face to that goddamned ceiling and whispered, “No, Peter. Not you. Anyone but you.”

Johnny didn’t understand. He needed someone to help him understand. Or to slow down time so that he could process the thousand things he’d just missed.

He slipped off the couch and curled up on the floor. He watched MJ beg God for mercy. He didn’t have any words for her. He could only reach for her hand. It was warm. And not just from the tears.

“MJ,” he murmured. “What’s happening? How—how do you know him?”

Twelve years ago, Mary Jane Watson had moved into an apartment in Queens. She’d hated it. She’d absolutely despised it.

Every day was a slog through the shit-pit of hell, she told Johnny. But she hadn’t been alone.

There was a line of them. Three apartments on the one side of the hall. MJ’s family lived in the farthest from the stairs. A boy named Flash Thompson lived in the one closest to the stairs. And between them lived a boy called Peter Parker.

He was quiet.

When MJ had moved in, he’d knocked on her front door that night with a plate full of cookies surrounding a small tin of tea in its center.

He welcomed them on behalf of his aunt and uncle. He said if MJ or her family ever needed anything, that his little family lived in the center apartment. They kept funny hours. She could knock any time. MJ had tried to find it in her to smile, but it was hard to when she knew how thin the walls were.

Her dad was a bastard.

She quickly learned that the father living in the home on the other side of the Parkers’ place was, too.

Peter was home alone a lot, separated by two walls and only that from two separate screaming matches that picked up and died off at all hours of the day.

Flash took it out on Peter at school. They’d known each other for years. Flash’s family had moved into the building six years before MJ’s had, and Flash’s only real way of expressing affection for someone was by giving them a hard time.

It didn’t look so innocent from the outside.

MJ had heard something glass shatter once from two whole doors down. Her parents had sworn about the goddamn Thompsons. Her dad had stuck his head out of the door and, in a moment of ageless irony, had threatened to call the police.

The next day, Flash shoved Peter into a drinking fountain in an exaggerated hip-check and the sound had reverberated like that broken glass.

Two weeks after that, there was a shout and when MJ looked out her window, she saw a crowd gathering out in the street. People started yelling. She’d leaned over the sill to get a better look at things but was left only frustrated. An ambulance arrived to the scene and the crowd dispersed. The ambulance’s lights didn’t turn on.

She hadn’t thought much about it, then, but hours later, she’d heard a fist hit the wall right by her head and she’d jerked awake in horror.

There wasn’t anyone in her room.

There had only been the sound of Peter’s screaming heart, muffled by drywall.

MJ remembered Ben Parker. He’d been funny. He smiled at MJ and told her jokes in the elevator. He asked her once if Peter was okay at school.

He wore glasses and had a graying goatee and mustache and MJ had seen Peter, even at fourteen years old, take his hand once—not embarrassed at all. He was teasing. He’d swung it back and forth and Ben had laughed at him and pulled him into a fond headlock and she’d thought that it wasn’t fair that some kids got dads like Ben Parker and some kids got dads like hers.

Peter was never the same, MJ said.

Another kid transferred into their class the day before Peter came back to class.

He shouldn’t have come back.

This new kid’s name was Tall Evan. MJ said everyone called him that because Short Evan was a tenor in the choir and was an absolute delight. Tall Evan was fuckin’ _mean_. He slammed Flash into a door because he caught him smiling at a girl down the hall.

He went out of his way to make Flash’s life hell, jabbing a finger in his face and calling him the names that Flash’s dad did. He asked Simón Chavez, an up and coming track star, if he thought Flash was pretty enough to suck his cock.

It was disgusting.

Everyone hated Tall Evan. And Tall Evan decided at some point that making friends wasn’t worth his time; he upped the ante. Two weeks after Ben Parker’s murder, Tall Evan drew a rat on Peter’s locker and told him to get in an oven during a Life Skills class.

Peter had stared at him. MJ hadn’t understood at the time, but she understood now why Peter had switched to band the next week.

It didn’t stop anything.

Tall Evan hated how Peter refused to give him the reaction he wanted. He took things from his desk. He took bites out of Peter’s food at lunch. He followed him and MJ and Flash halfway home for no reason at all.

It made Flash furious. He stood up for Peter and got socked in the gut for it. Afterwards, Peter told him it wasn’t worth it.

He didn’t care about Tall Evan. He just wanted to be left alone.

MJ heard him shuffling around at night sometimes, hissing and swearing and she’d assumed—maybe it was fucked up—but she’d just assumed that he was cutting himself. She had friends who did it. Peter’s clothes were always too big for him. There was no reason that he couldn’t be hiding it.

They’d never mentioned it. Her or Flash. They were all keeping enough of each others’ secrets. This one didn’t seem different from any of the others.

But now, everything made so much sense. Too much sense.

“He used to come home late,” MJ said, wringing her hands. “I was out once. Caught him coming on the stairs. His face was—Johnny, it was horrible. He had this cloth—he was holding it here,” she mimed holding something to her cheek, “And there was so much blood. His eye wouldn’t open. He told me that someone outside had opened their door into his face.”

Christ.

“We could have shared clothes, Johnny, he was so small.”

Johnny knew that, but he hadn’t known about the rest—well. The extent of the rest.

“How did he not tell you?” MJ asked. “That was his life. He was as fucked up as the rest of us.”

Johnny didn’t know.

“Are you mad at him?” he asked quietly.

MJ said nothing for a long time. She wrapped her fingers around her ankles and sniffed hard.

“You know why he’s like this, Johnny?” she asked.

A ball of lead started to turn in the bottom of Johnny’s stomach. His throat wanted to plead her not to tell him. He didn’t want to know anymore. He didn’t. Really he didn’t.

“Her name was Gwen,” MJ said quietly. “Gwen Stacy. She was fuckin’ _stunning_. Perfect. I’m—” she swallowed and her voice cracked and brought tears to Johnny’s own eyes, “I’m talkin’ blue eyes, blonde hair—she didn’t dye a single one. Her eyeliner was al-always so sharp. She came in in the last few months of senior year, but I think she and Peter got into the same college. And I was—I was a kid, okay? Peter was _my_ neighbor. _My_ friend. I was the one who was supposed to know all his secrets. Me and Flash. That was how it worked. But she made him smile like she was his whole world.”

Johnny grabbed at his own ankles.

“I hated her,” MJ admitted. “For months, I hated her. But then she started to come around—you know, she’d come and knock on Peter’s door and he’d bang-crash-swear through the house to get there before May did. It was cute. He’d like, I dunno, pretend to be a cool guy in the doorway with her all the time. She was so uptight at school, but Peter could make her laugh at the drop of a hat. He loved her so much, Johnny.”

Johnny squeezed his eyes closed.

“They got together officially in the middle of freshmen year of college. Flash told me about it. He was like ‘ _finally,_ ’ you know? I don’t think they stayed together. She must’ve known—she must’ve—”

Johnny reached over and re-wrapped his right hand around MJ’s left. She sniffed.

“He must’ve been trying to protect her,” she hiccupped. “During winter break, she came to go with him to the synagogue and I heard him apologizing. He kept saying ‘I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry. I love you.’ She said that it was okay. She kept saying that. She made him stop by asking him how many candles there were again. I remember thinking how ironic it was that even the smartest girl at school played dumb for her boyfriend _. Gwen._ I’m so sorry. You deserved more than this. We should have been friends.”

Johnny’s throat was closing.

“They got back together?” he asked.

MJ’s breath hitched. She wiped at her face with the back of the hand that Johnny wasn’t holding.

“Two years ago,” she sniffed. “I went home. They were kissing in the doorway. She was—she was taking off his jacket. They got awkward when I came out of the elevator. I told Gwen to go easy on him. Then last year—last year she—Johnny, everyone in our building told Peter that it was all Spiderman’s fault. He was the one who let her fall. _He_ murdered her. _The Bugle_ was right. It wasn’t Peter’s fault.”

Oh _god_.

“He must hate all of us so much.”

No.

No, that wasn’t Peter Parker.

“He only hates himself,” Johnny murmured.

MJ let out a sob.

“Peter, it’s not your fault,” she creaked into the space between her knees.

Johnny finally unfolded himself and wrapped his arms around her. He squeezed his eyes closed as she shook.

MJ had a picture. An old facebook profile picture.

Gwen Stacy’s wall was covered in long messages that went unanswered. It looked like her family had recently posted a number of tributes to her.

MJ was right.

She was beautiful.

Blue eyes the color of winter with heavy mascara and eyeliner. Her lips were pink and glossy and her skin so pale it could have been ivory. White flyaways blustered around her head, tossing around the rest of the pale blonde mass that Gwen had tied back into a pony tail.

Johnny knew immediately that Peter had taken this picture.

There were no pictures of him with her on the page.

“How did she die?” Johnny asked.

MJ rubbed her cheek on her shoulder.

“You heard of the Green Goblin?”

Yeah, Johnny had.

“He threw her off a roof.”

Fuck.

“Spiderman caught her. But then the goblin cut his line. She fell. He caught her again, but it was too close to the ground. People said that the damage to her skull was ‘catastrophic.’ She went instantly.”

Horrible.

“Yeah,” MJ said, swallowing.

Christ.

“I’m sorry, Johnny.”

His head snapped up.

“Sorry about what?” he asked.

“I know you like him,” MJ said. “Like _that_ , I mean. I did—do—too. But he’s—I don’t know how he’s going to come back from Gwen. You don’t just get over Gwen. She was perfect, man.”

No one is perfect.

“You didn’t know her.”

Johnny put down the phone.

“Peter’s alone,” he said. “He spends all his time talking to birds. Sue saw him out singing to ducks in Central Park a while back, MJ.”

“Oh, god,” MJ said. “He’s turning into a Subway Man. He’s going to start talking to people on the train next.”

“Exactly,” Johnny said. “We can’t let that happen.”

MJ chewed at her bottom lip.

“So what do we do?” she asked. “I don’t know anyone he’s close to anymore. Maybe, Flash?”

Johnny nodded.

“That’s a good start,” he said. “And maybe the two of us can try to figure out ways to like, re-socialize him, you know? Have a movie night or something?”

“Johnny, he’s taking self-care advice from _Deadpool_ , oh my god.”

Oh, did that just catch up with her? Fun.

“This is what I’m talking about,” he said. “It’s dire. We’ve close this friendship circle around him before we lose him to grief and Deadpool’s self-help group.”


	5. be a part of it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, 911? I’ve got 3 stupid heroes in a hallway and there’s only enough air for two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Please Read:**
> 
> Before we get started, I wanted to draw folks' attention the change in the tags. I've been working on this story for the last week, and have rewritten the next few chapters each about three times, but no matter how many times I've reworked it, it didn't feel right. 
> 
> This is still a story about Peter and Johnny. But now it's going to be a story about Peter, Johnny, and Sam. It turns out that sometimes, when you set out to write one story, the people in it take your hand and lead you in a different direction. 
> 
> Thanks for your understanding!
> 
> \---
> 
> Reference to self-harm.

Peter woke up to the dulcet tones of the main building’s fire alarm. He blinked and started counting. When he got to twenty, he gave in and rolled out of bed to grab some sweatpants. May was in the kitchen when he got in there, looking just as ruffled and grumpy as he did, with M87 yowling in the crook of her arm.

Peter shoved his feet into his sneakers, flattening the backs because he literally could not be assed to bend down and tug at the moment.

The alarm was even louder in the hallway and, to be fair, the place _did_ smell smoky. They were further greeted by Flash outside his door, herding Jesse and his mom towards the stairs and screaming at his old man to wake up or die of smoke inhalation.

When he noticed Peter and May, he gave them a wave with the phone in his hand.

Peter squeezed his shoulder as they passed. Flash patted back at the gesture messily and groaned, barely audible over the screech around them, before disappearing back into the apartment to drag the Mister-est of Thompsons out from between the sheets.

“That man oughtta stay there,” May sniffed on the way down the stairs.

Peter reminded her that they were in public. She didn’t give two shits.

Mr. Furaha was at the very bottom of the stairwell, holding the door open. Peter took it from him and told him to go on ahead. He waved May ahead too and planted himself against the metal as bodies flowed down the stairs and then past him into the courtyard.

The smell of smoke was getting stronger. Peter found himself blinking tears out of his eyes.

He coughed about thirty seconds later.

It triggered something. The crowd started moving faster.

He, on the other hand, found himself looking up.

The air was getting hazy. There was a baby crying. Peter blinked slowly and watched the bodies.

He watched and counted.

Watched and counted.

Then he took a deep breath.

Ms. Rahal was 74 years old. She lived upstairs. Peter somehow knew she was still there. He hadn’t seen her pass by him—and he wouldn’t miss her.

She used a cane. Someone would have to help her down the steps.

That baby was wailing closer now.

He left the door and started making his way through the bodies pouring down the steps, back up, up, up to the seventh floor.

Folks shouted at him to head the other way. A few grabbed his shirt and tried to pull him back with them. He shouted at them with stinging eyes, asking if anyone had seen Najah. You know, Ms. Rahal? The tiny old lady with brown skin and dark eyes who always wore a pink and yellow headscarf?

Anyone? Anyone?

Magenta? Yellow?

No?

Yeah, that was what he thought. He pressed on.

Ms. Rahal’s neighbors were pounding on her door on the seventh floor, covering their faces with their arms and shouting through the smoke. It was hot up there. Hot, hot, hot. Sweltering, and smoky. Peter was sweating and the air was thick. He called to the guys as best as he could, but they didn’t answer. It wasn’t until he reached for the doorhandle before people started yelling at him not to touch it.

It was burning.

Why hello, Mr. Fire. So we meet again. Are you tryin’ to take this little old lady, sir?

The shouting of the neighbors was growing frantic. People couldn’t get in enough oxygen—they got halfway through a breath before coughing and choking. None of the noise would wake up Ms. Rahal now. The fire was starting to roar. Peter could feel it from the burn in back of his throat to his ears to his neck. She needed out. Opening this door would let in a surge of oxygen and set the place up like a match.

Think, Parker. Think. Come on, in the case of a fire, stop, drop and roll.

In the case of a fire, stop, drop, and roll.

In the case of a—

A case.

The door next to Ms. Rahal’s had been left open by one of the men choking on Arabic. Peter grabbed his shoulder.

“IS THAT YOUR HOUSE?” he rasped.

The man shook his head and tugged at his neighbor, the taller man. Peter caught that guy’s arm and repeated his question, pointing. He got a lolling nod.

These guys were going to pass out.

But they weren’t leaving, were they?

Hello, 911? I’ve got 3 stupid heroes in a hallway and there’s only enough air for two.

Peter lurched away from them for the door.

That apartment was smoky and hot, but not as bad as the hallway. It was set up almost exactly the same as Peter and May’s, but everything was done in the opposite direction. The fire-escape hadn’t moved, however; it was a fixed point. The window was open. Peter didn’t have to smash it, he just had to mind the broken glass on the other side from the exploded window next door.

It was a bad look out there. He could see the flames in Ms. Rahal’s place from here and the jump between this fire-escape and that one’s would require some momentum.

He didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of space to build it.

Welp, it’s now or never.

He threw himself to the other side of the small balcony as far as he could go and steadied himself. One lunge to the middle, then push off for the railing. Don’t stop. Push off the railing hard, _hard_. Like you mean it

Then land.

It was going to be hot.

Ready, Parker?

Ready.

Excellent. Game, set, match.

The world blurred. The railing felt like it would give. The one on the other side did, but he caught himself on the lip of the window sill. His hands felt like they were tingling for a second as the tiny, regrowing hairs on his hands were singed off for the second time in a month.

Down below, there were sirens. The fire department. People were shouting. They could see him.

That was a problem for future-Peter. He pulled himself up and leaned inside.

Ms. Rahal was passed out in a chair, not two yards from the front door. Her cane was on the floor. Peter could hear the men still yelling on the other side. The air around him scorched his lungs. He didn’t have time; he leap off the windowsill as it made a huge cracking sound and gathered Ms. Rahal’s limp body into his arms. It was awkward. She was barely moving and couldn’t take any of her weight, and her nightgown made it hard to know where her limbs were.

He got her up and tried to shout back to the neighbors through the smoke and the roar. His voice kept breaking, but despite that he heard the others’ voices pick up with hope.

“DOOR,” he roared. “MOVE.”

There would be a rush of oxygen.

This place was going to go up.

“GET BACK,” he shouted again, and wrapped his arms around Ms. Rahal as tight as he could hold her.

Sorry, Ms. Rahal. This was going to be _very_ uncomfortable.

The first shoulder to the door didn’t break it. The second one did. And sure enough, all the air in the hallway was sucked in and the flames and smoke inside created a backdraft. It probably wasn’t as big as it could have been, given the broken window, but it was enough to send everyone in the hallway stumbling.

One of the neighbors righted Peter before he lost his grip on Ms. Rahal. His hands were strong. Also fuzzy. Wow, everything was fuzzy, wasn’t it? And loud. Loud like scream. Loud like a bell right in Peter’s ear.

Ringing, that was it. Everything was ringing.

Someone called for Ben.

Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker.

Mr. Parker.

Weight left his arms.

May was _furious_ with him when he came back to consciousness. So were the firefighters. So were the paramedics.

They kept reminding Peter that he’d just been at the burn unit, like, within weeks. Peter didn’t know what to say back to that besides, ‘yes, but you appear to have forgotten an important point, which is that I am criminally incapable of minding my own business.’

Back to the hospital, they went.

Ms. Rahal’s family was there—all of her nieces and nephews and cousins and siblings. The neighbors were too, but for the same reason that Peter was. He waved at them. They smiled and waved back before their wives started scolding the ever-loving shit out of them.

May told him that if he kept this up, she was having him sanctioned.

On the way home, or rather, in the taxi to the hotel that they were now staying at, she begged Peter to not do anything like this again for the next week. Just the next week.

“I’m not asking for much, Peter,” She said without looking at him.

Peter pinched his fingers and rubbed them hard around M87 in his lap.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You could have been killed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, just—” she sighed. “Maybe we need to try therapy again.”

 _No_. He was fine, May. He was stupid—that’s what he was. Stupid and full of himself and a flat-out bastard. He was a gossip who couldn’t mind his manners or affairs. He—

“Peter, listen to me.”

He fell silent.

“This is starting to become a pattern,” May said firmly. “Not just to me, to others. It’s starting to look like self-harm.”

It wasn’t that.

“Are you sure?”

He was.

May’s face said that she didn’t believe him and Peter’s pulse rocketed up and made his hands start to shake. He buried them in M87’s fur and she made a confused little meow.

“Peter, breathe, honey.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Breathe, baby. I’m not angry with you.”

It didn’t feel like it.

**SC:** you fucking idiot

May was on the phone to the folks doing building checks out on the balcony. The room she’d left Peter in was sterile and devoid of color. He stared at a huge, washed out picture of a sailboat behind the headboard and wondered if the hotel designer had thought that putting it there was some sort of callback to Coney Island.

Either that, or the blue and gray-brown in it were supposed to be calming.

**SC:** I was so fucking worried. are you okay?

Peter picked M87 up from where she was wailing, insulted by the wood preventing her from hiding under the bed. He sat down on the mattress and let her squirm in his arms until she was comfortable.

**PP:** sorry. Upstairs neighbor was 74 yo.

 **SC:** oh my god Nana MOVE

Peter laughed.

Sam got it. He always got it. Peter wished he was closer now; hugging M87 was fine, but Sam was generally warmer.

**SC:** have y’all got somewhere to stay?

 **PP:** building manager put everyone up in a hotel. It’s bleak as fuck.

 **SC:** don’t tell me. pink, blue, brown theme?

 **PP:** blue brown black theme

 **SC:** someone tell them that 2002 is calling for its money back

M87 discovered the hem of Peter’s shirt and remembered that she could press her cold little toe beans against his belly. He winced.

**SC:** how long are you there?

 **PP:** probably a week. We’re being promised that safety crews are in now. But you know landlords.

 **SC:** fuck em

 **PP:** fuck em

 **SC:** If I could, I’d offer y’all a place here

 **PP:** nah don’t worry about it we’re good. Thanks tho ❤

 **SC:** let me know if you need anything man

 **PP:** a hug?

 **SC:** awwww. shower first, soot creature.

 **PP:** lololol alright will do ttyl sammy

May came back in and put her hands on her hips while she sighed.

“I hate hotels,” she said.

Peter patted the bed next to him. She came over and sat down close, then startled.

“Peter, you’re freezing,” she said.

Peter shrugged. He was always cold these days.

“—and we didn’t bring a coat. Do you want to go get one?”

Well there wasn’t too much of a choice. They both had no clothes, and Peter couldn’t very well walk into _The Bugle_ in fuchsia Hello Kitty sweats with ‘No. 02’ emblazoned on his ass, now could he?

May smirked at him.

“You could try,” she said.

Haha. Very funny. Come on, lady, we’ve gotta go shopping.

It was weird to buy new clothes. Neither of them ever bought new clothes and certainly not clothes that weren’t dug out of the stacks and wracks of a consignment store. But alas, there they were. Target was not the worst place in the world to buy jeans from, despite the blinding florescent lights.

These even sort of fit, these jeans. And the t-shirts were soft and thick. They weren’t pimpled with pills or holes. Peter wondered why he didn’t shop at Target more often. There was one near the train station by home.

He was allowed to buy new things occasionally, right? Right.

New wardrobe: check.

Clearance from _The Bugle_ to use his phone’s camera and one of their computers in the media lab: check.

Aunt’s threats of therapy again: check.

They were on a roll. Normal was a nail’s breadth away.

**SC:** hey, Matt wanted you guys to know that you can stay at his place

Oh?

**SC:** yeah he’s invading Foggy’s apartment rn. I think he’s more than down to do that for a week or more, if you don’t mind the mood lighting.

Matt’s apartment was modelled after the last place that he’d felt safe as a kid, which was an institution. Being there now with that line of logic in hand made Peter’s heart bloom for him. Nothing major; a home was a home was a home, but Matt’s walls and floors had been bare for years and, behind his back, folks who’d been there had gossiped that he seemed like he was punishing himself. Peter had been one of those people, right up until he’d learned from Kirsten that Matt had grown up in foster care, and the places where he’d been abused the most were places designed to feel like home for other people.

Matt’s home, therefore, was an institution. An extension of an old church. That was his safe place. But it wasn’t only that. It was filled with little licks of a life after a long, drawn-out struggle. He had a creaky leather couch that pulled out into a bed, which Peter had spent many nights on. He had these enormous fleece blankets that friends had made for him over the years, since he was notoriously always trying to steal people’s jackets and scarves.

When Peter had been small enough to fit on the couch without having to curl, Matt had dumped three of those blankets on top of him and had then added more and more of his own weight until Peter couldn’t feel sorry for himself through the laughing anymore.

Matt’s place could be a home for the moment.

Peter asked May what she thought.

She thought that she would do anything to get away from this pastel box of silence.

Matt met them in Hell’s Kitchen at the outside door of his complex looking his best winter self. His hair was dotted with little drops of water from the rain outside. He gave them his key fob for getting into the building and took May’s offered arm on the way to the elevator. Once inside with a captive audience, he shook himself violently and sent May and Peter scrambling for the walls to get away from the spray.

He was a funny dude. Peter appreciated him now more than he had when he was younger.

Matt gave them his spare keys inside his apartment and said he’d just be a second, he had to collect some of the clothes that Foggy hated most. He welcomed them to use his bedroom and the couch, he didn’t mind. He apologized in advance for the smell of incense.

He left with a gymbag full of some truly obnoxious colors and an aura of glee that would surely protect him against the rain, if his umbrella didn’t work out.

May looked around once he’d gone and said that she was going to change. She told Peter to take the bed, but like hell he was doing that. He waved her into the shower and went on the hunt for one of those old fleece blankets.

There was a set of pictures that Peter had never noticed in a corner of the room. They sat on a table, two of them, each on either side of a small statue of the holy mother painted in blue and yellow and red. Before them was a little dish barely big enough to hold anything larger than a tealight.

The first picture, on the left, was of a woman.

Karen. This was Karen. The first love. Blue eyes and blond before Foggy’s January skies. She had a smirk, a sharp chin, and a spoon in her hand. She looked a little like Gwen, except with longer, more wavy hair, bluer eyes, and a sense of the devil about her. Peter noted a rough edge on the frame and peeked around it to be met with lines and lines of braille on the back. The bumps had once been the same color as the gilded front of the frame, but over time, they’d darkened from Matt reading them over and over.

It had to be a description.

The other framed image was older and lighter in color. The man in it was familiar; so, so familiar, because Matt walked around wearing so many of those same features.

This had to be his dad.

Peter smiled back at the guy’s beaming face. The toddler in the dude’s arms looked up at his chin, perplexed, with clear eyes unmarred by acid, soft downy hair, and two fingers in his mouth.

Baby Matt was precious. Peter didn’t blame his dad for fawning over him, even with a camera in their faces.

The back of this frame still retained some of its gilding. It must have been recently redone or replaced. Maybe Matt’s heart had seized one day when he realized that he’d worn the bumps down with his callouses.

“Peter?”

He stood up.

“What’s that?”

“Red’s family,” he said. “I was havin’ a snoop.”

May hummed.

“Move aside, child, let the old woman have her turn,” she said.

**SC:** hey are you settled?

 **PP:** yeah what’s up?

 **SC:** great I’m invading your privacy in T-45.

Excellent.

Sam’s hair smelt like something spicy and soapy, and it was damp when Peter leaned his cheek against it. Sam punched him in the gut and told him to stop flinging himself into fires. He didn’t let go of the back of Peter’s new shirt, though.

May was charmed, she always was with Sam. Peter was 90% sure that she was planning the font for their future wedding invitations. And Sam was, of course, pleased by May’s approval because it meant that he could rag on Peter all he wanted. He laid into such privileges liberally.

“Do y’all need anything?” Sam asked when he was done experiencing his emotion for the day. “The old guy’s got me on patrol with him tonight, so if you think of something later, just text me and I’ll find it. Oh, and we’re boycotting the gastropub—the one with the back patio lights—yeah, fuck ‘em. Avoid.”

Noted, Samuel. They were good for now.

“Stay out of trouble,” Sam threatened Peter with a finger. “This is _our_ turf. No hero-antics. We’ve got it covered.”

Peter flicked his eyes between the finger and Sammy’s face cheekily and got attacked for his crimes. May laughed. Sam huffed and flicked down his mask. He exited via window, every bit Matt’s protégé.

“He’s so sweet,” May pointed out for the billionth time.

M87 clambered up onto Peter’s hip that night and Peter grabbed her and pulled her up into his arms so that he could feel her purring against his chest.

“Start spreadin’ the news,” he sung to her. “I’m leavin’ today. I want to be a part of it.”

New York.

New York.

Sirens rang outside the window. The billboard outside bathed M87 in purple and pink. She rumbled. Peter closed his eyes.


	6. clang clang clang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MJ: Peter I need to be honest with you. Can I be honest with you?

**MJ:** hi Peter. I know it’s been a long time since we talked. I saw you on tv yesterday. I really dig the Hello Kitty sweats.

 **PP:** !!! Hey man!! Yeah it’s been ages, how are you doing?

 **MJ:** I’m doing okay. I could be better.

 **MJ:** Peter I need to be honest with you. Can I be honest with you?

 **PP:** ? sure?

 **MJ:** I made a friend in college. I knew who he was. I just didn’t think we’d become friends like we have. But now we have, and I bullied him into telling me something the other day that I can’t make him take back. And I wanted to apologize for it.

 **PP:** well. I mean. Bullying is the worst, we both know this given that we lived it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it right. You can always apologize and be different from here on.

 **MJ:** you would say that.

**PP:** ?? are you still there?

 **PP:** Are you okay? Did someone hurt you?

 **MJ:** I’m trying to apologize.

 **PP:** oh. is it hard?

 **MJ:** yeah. See the thing that friend told me is about someone who I care a lot about and who doesn’t know what I know.

 **PP:** fucking sucks man. I’m in the same-ish boat tbh with someone from class.

 **MJ:** oh yeah?

 **PP:** yeah. But, you know, I talked to one of my friends and he told me to just send a professional email like ‘hi, I know I hurt your feelings and that was wrong of me. I was going through personal circumstances that I could not control and I used you as an outlet and I’m sorry for that. It has nothing to do with anything that you did.’ Etc etc.

 **PP:** it worked okay. Not perfect, but you know. At least we’re not hanging around in midair anymore.

 **MJ:** you really sent that message?

 **PP:** well yeah. I’m not great at running from problems. The guilt was eating me alive.

 **PP:** anyways, this is just to say that you can apologize and it will be okay. Maybe not perfect, but better than everything hanging around in space.

 **MJ:** right. okay.

 **MJ:** I wanted to apologize to you, then.

 **PP:** what? To me?

 **MJ:** I didn’t know I would hurt your feelings, but I know telling you is going to. And I’m sorry for that.

 **PP:** what are you talking about?

 **MJ:** I know who you are, Peter.

 **PP:** I’m not anyone

 **MJ:** please don’t.

 **PP:** I don’t understand MJ. you’ve always known who I am

 **MJ:** don’t make me say it please. I don’t know how to do this to keep you safe. I don’t know how to be honest with you while keeping your secret.

 **PP:** who is your friend? The one who told you this thing?

 **MJ:** don’t be angry with him.

 **PP:** Who’s your friend, MJ?

 **MJ:** His name is Johnny. We met in undergrad. I got locked out of my room and I was too embarrassed to get an RA on the first day. Johnny was in the hallway and he saw me starting to get upset. He told me not to worry. He went and stole a butterknife from the dining center and jimmied the lock.

 **PP:** …yeah that sounds like him.

 **MJ:** I know why you didn’t tell me.

 **PP:** MJ

 **MJ:** Johnny didn’t think it would mean anything to me. Your name, I mean. He couldn’t have known. I never told him about where I grew up. About where I went to school. My dad. I hadn’t told him a lot of things before that moment actually…

 **PP:** …I’m pretty angry.

 **MJ:** I’m sorry Peter.

 **PP:** Don’t tell anyone else.

 **MJ:** I won’t.

 **PP:** people’s fucking lives depend on this MJ.

 **MJ:** I won’t tell anyone. I swear.

 **PP:** Can I trust you?

 **MJ:** of course you can trust me.

 **PP:** Are you sure? Because I trusted him.

 **MJ:** Peter, I’m sorry. Don’t be angry with him.

 **PP:** That’s between us. Thank you for being honest with me.

 **MJ:** I don’t know how to make this right.

 **PP:** I wish he hadn’t done that. If anyone suspects that you know anything now, you’ll be a target.

 **MJ:** I’m realizing that.

 **PP:** I lost Gwen because of this exact thing. This EXACT thing.

 **MJ:** Peter I’m so sorry.

 **PP:** I don’t know why it is SO hard for people to just not do shit like this.

 **MJ:** what can I do? What do you need me to do?

 **PP:** …

 **PP:** Well, I guess I’m going to have to bite you.

 **MJ:** WHAT

 **PP:** lol

 **PP:** gotcha bitch. That’ll teach you to gossip.

 **MJ:** OH MY GOD

 **PP:** nah we’re gonna have to do something tho. You know any self defense?

 **MJ:** you asshole. God.

 **MJ:** uh. SING?

 **PP:** Ms. Congeniality is a VERY good movie with great instructions for basic self defense yes. But that only works for people who are trained conventionally.

 **MJ:** idk what that means

 **PP:** that means that it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood and you’re about to meet my favorite assassin ❤

 **PP:** tell Johnny I understand, but I’m furious and we’re over forever. Thanks boo 💋

 **MJ:** ok. And hey.

 **PP:** hey?

 **MJ:** They call you amazing. it’s so true. You are amazing. I wish I could be like you one day Peter.

 **PP:** you can for the low low price of one slightly infected lovenip from your friendly neighborhood

 **MJ:** you are not fucking biting me you sonuvabitch.


	7. stockings and garters and resolutions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Woah,” Miranda said. “Look at us, we’re all pretty and broke.”
> 
> Peter beamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Texting heavy chapter ahead. 
> 
> References to some family issues, recognizing a need for intervention in self-harming/self-destructive tendencies, and avoiding direct conflict as a way of coping with past neglect/emotional abuse.

In olden days, a bit of stocking was looked on as something shocking.

But now God knows. Anything goes.

“Spidey?”

In olden days—

“Isn’t this a little high up for you?” Peter hummed. “I thought all hats were supposed to keep arms and legs inside the ride at all times?”

The birds flapped and hurried away from the footsteps behind him. He offered Joel in his lap a few fingers, which he accepted so that he could be elevated to Peter’s shoulder for security. Peter looked back out at the city. There was a grayish haze over it that afternoon from the incoming storm. He purposefully didn’t glance over to see Miranda’s brown hands shaking ever so slightly on the damp concrete next to him.

He gave her time and space to gather her courage and climb carefully over the barrier so that she could sit next to him.

“Was that you on the news the other day, Spidey?” she asked once she was settled. Peter felt the ends of a few of her braids scrape against his shoulder.

He tipped his head back to the gray clouds above them.

In olden days, a bit of stocking was looked on as something shocking.

“You know a lot of old songs, don’t you?”

Mm. Not really. It was more about what got caught on the pigeon spikes of Peter’s mind.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

In olden days, a bit of _privacy_ —

“I knew from the pants.”

Peter barked a laugh.

“Everyone knows me these days,” he told Joel. “What’s a guy gotta do to get a break around here?”

Joel nibbled on his ear through the mask, then cawed obnoxiously in his face. Peter winced.

“Lovely,” he said. He heard Miranda chuckle a little. He finally turned her way.

“Do you know the next lines?” he asked.

“Nah, man. Sorry. You wanna know somethin’? I was relieved that you’re brunet.”

“God, blonds,” he groaned. “I’m done with blonds.”

Miranda leaned over her knees and then pulled herself back up.

“Why me?” she asked.

“Because,” Peter said. “I like you. You’re funny. You care about all this.” He held his hands out to the hazy skyline. It felt like he was holding a feather-light snowglobe.

Miranda hummed.

“I like history,” she said. “I signed up to talk about the old shit. But folks only come for the new shit. It’s all buildings to them, you know that?”

Yeah, Peter knew.

The life of the city didn’t hide in buildings. It tottered out into the light of traffic lights and the reflections of soaked sidewalks. It passed over steaming manholes and swore when it dunked the toe of a sneaker into an overflowing gutter, and then it stood, already forgetting that trauma, in a ring of fellows around a box containing a grease-covered griddle and a box of damp paper napkins.

Peter didn’t eat meat, but the smell could be comforting.

“What do you do, Spidey?”

He smiled.

“The same thing you do,” he said. “I tell stories.”

“Journalist?”

“Nah. Don’t got a degree.”

“What, really?”

“Really,” Peter said. “I’m workin’ on it. It’s a lot of money.”

Miranda leaned her chin onto her palm and peeked over the edge of the building again.

“Photographer,” Peter told her.

“Damn. You’re an artist?”

“Says the historian.”

She was grinning. Peter reached around her head and clicked his tongue for one of the birds. Issacher perked up first and flapped up to land on his fingers. Peter guided him to Miranda’s shoulder and left him there to snuggle up against her cheek.

“Aw,” she said. “They’re sort of cute.”

They were. And pretty. And good listeners.

“What brings you into my office?” Peter asked. “Have you come to accuse me of crimes against fashion?”

“Mm, not fashion crimes,” Miranda said. “More like research. My friend just joined our crew of red hats.”

Peter turned to her and tipped his head to the side.

“Friend?” he said. “Another historian?”

“Something like that,” Miranda said. “She’s doing a doctorate in anthropology.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“And she picked ‘tour guide’ as her day job?”

“Gotta work to eat. She says she ‘observes’ the tourists for cultural disorientation and hegemonic ideals.”

 _Nice_. Peter liked her already.

“Is she coming up here, too?” he asked.

“Only if you want her to. I told her about the pyramid scheme.”

“And?”

“She said you’re a ‘brazen idiot,’ and she wants to study you.”

Peter cackled. Joel flapped violently against his face in offense. Apparently, only one of them was allowed to make sudden noises at will.

In olden, days a bit of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now God knows.

Anything goes.

“Bring ‘er up sometime,” Peter said. “I could use some new faces.”

In olden days.

A bit of stocking.

“Hey, Sammy.”

“S’up, Pete?”

“You busy?”

“It’s rainin’.”

“I want you to meet someone.”

Sam glanced back at the window.

“You can go,” Matt called from the racket he was making in his office. “We’ll lock up.”

Sam looked over in his direction, then lifted blue eyes back to Peter.

The roost was soaked. There were no birds. But there was Sam and he curled up into Peter’s side a ways back from the edge in the mostly dry nook formed by a series of storage containers and huge ventilation pipes. Sam shivered and pressed his cheek into Peter’s shoulder.

He was easily cold, this guy. Peter himself wasn’t easily warm, but his metabolism helped him put out heat if not retain it.

The laces on Sam’s shoes dripped rainwater.

“In olden days, a bit of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now God knows. Anything goes.”

“One of these—one of these days, you gotta learn the rest,” Sam huffed.

“Do you know it?” Peter asked him.

“Sort of.”

“Help me.”

“I can’t sing.”

“I don’t care. I have to know the rest or my brain’s gonna explode.”

“But I can’t sing.”

Peter wrapped an arm around Sam’s waist and pulled him close enough that their sides were touching from ribs to knee. It offered a nostalgic kind of heat.

“Good authors too, who once knew better words, now only use four letter words writing prose. Anything goes,” Sammy warbled quietly.

Atta boy.

“You’re a good singer, what’re you even talkin’ about?” Peter jibed. “Do the whole thing with me.”

“Can we go home?” Sam asked him. “It’s freezing.”

Mm.

There was a splash somewhere outside the nook. It sent a little pulse down Peter’s spine and back. He reached over and laced his fingers with those of the hand wrapped around Sam’s waist.

“Hello, hello, hello,” he greeted the shapes that peered into the nook in front of them. “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

Miranda’s friend was much lighter skinned. Her hair wasn’t braided; it was voluminous, and little drops of rain had settled onto the top of it. Her eyes were dark and curious and wavering as Miranda coaxed her into the dry place.

Sam flattened himself against Peter’s side. His cheek had left Peter’s shoulder and was soft no longer behind his white mask.

“You said birds,” Miranda’s friend said. “These are cats.”

Sam hissed and made Peter snicker.

“This is my friend,” Peter said to Miranda. “Folks call ‘im ‘Blindspot.’”

Miranda’s eyebrows rose like yeasted bread. She had put little golden cuffs on a few of her braids.

“Blindspot?” she asked. “Like the guy from Chinatown?”

Sam tilted his mask at her.

“This is Miranda,” Peter said.

Sam jerked away from him.

“What, for real?” he asked. “Dude. You could’ve at least _told_ me we were meeting Miranda. I would’ve dug out the nice mask.”

“This one’s fine,” Peter said.

“It’s _filthy_ ,” Sam groaned, shoving Peter none-too-gently away from him and abandoning him completely to offer a hand to Miranda.

“Hi,” he said in a much kinder tone. “You can call me BT.”

Miranda’s eyes settled down and her cheeks threatened to stand out in her face. She took the offered hand.

“Nice to meet you. So you _do_ have friends,” she said in Peter’s direction. He huffed. People truly had no faith. All he did was tell the truth and not a damn soul in this city believed him.

“I am friend,” Sam said. “The one and only.”

Miranda grinned for real.

“No,” she said, “I was here first.”

Sam pulled her forward by their linked hands so that his mask squinted right into her eyes. He let her go.

“Debatable,” he said. “Regardless, it is nice to finally have a name to the body which tolerates this guy alongside me.”

Miranda sat down where she was and gestured for her friend to do the same. Peter scooted forward and reclaimed his place next to Sam.

“My friend,” he said. “Now your friend.” He gestured at the curious lady.

Miranda licked her lips and smiled at her friend, who blinked and visibly shook the shock off.

“MJ,” she said. “People call me MJ.”

Well. Would you look at that.

“Don’t you already have an MJ?” Sam asked him.

“She’s dead to me,” Peter said brightly. “Nice to meet you, MJ.”

“Michelle,” ‘MJ’ amended.

“Dead to you?” Sam asked. “When did that happen? I thought this was highschool crush number—”

Peter shoved knuckles into his ribs and acquired sweet, blessed silence for half a second before Sam reciprocated the gesture with 20% more oomph to it.

“A crush?” Miranda repeated. “Wow, Spidey, you’ve been holding out on me.”

“You’ve been met,” Peter said, standing up. “We’re done. Come on, BT.”

“But we just started,” Sam said. “I have so much dirty laundry to air.”

“It’s raining,” Peter said, “Bad day for laundry. Come on.”

Sam hunkered down with determination. Peter glared at him. Sam brought his shoulders up and sunk in his heels.

“Fine,” Peter said. “Stay. I’m heading back.”

He didn’t have a chance. Sam was too fast and didn’t give a shit about embarrassing himself in front of girls. He lunged and caught Peter’s ankle as Peter turned around.

Peter landed on his hip and swore. He paused at the sound of giggling.

Giggling. Look at these people. Entertained by his pain. Wow.

“Spidey, get back in here,” Miranda said.

Michelle was the one getting the doctorate. She wanted to work in forensics. Peter was awed by her. She spoke of bones and decomposition surrounded by the rattle and drip of rain.

She got a little awkward when she finished explaining what she did and the hiss of the water filled a gap of silence before Sam, always happy to slam a heel down on awkwardness, launched in with “that’s so cool, where are you placed?”

“Michigan State,” Michelle said. “But I’m doing fieldwork with a lab out here.”

“You talk like a local,” Peter said.

“Yeah, I grew up here,” Michelle told him. “What about you guys?”

Them? Peter and Sam shared a look.

“Professional nutjobs,” Sam said for both of them. “Certified Assholes.”

Peter leaned an elbow on his shoulder and nodded; both of them engaged ‘Hot and Cocky’ mode. Miranda busted a gut. Michelle’s lips barely flickered.

God, she was good.

“So you’re cops,” she said.

Hot and Cocky couldn’t last in the face of such insult and Peter and Sam started decrying this libel at the same time. _That_ made Michelle crack a grin.

“Just checking,” she said. “Where I work, we got loads of cops. It’s pretty shit.”

“I’ll bet,” Peter said. “BT works with cops, too.”

“Can confirm: definitely shit,” Sam said.

“Oh?” Miranda said. “So you’re a professional nutjob in the criminal justice system?”

Sam recoiled from her.

“Sort of,” he mumbled. “Did you—are we?” he asked Peter.

Peter shrugged.

“I’m an artist,” he told Michelle. She wasn’t expecting that. Sam looked between her and Peter and rubbed at his jaw.

“Paralegal,” he said.

“Woah,” Miranda said. “Look at us, we’re all pretty and broke.”

Peter beamed.

“Pretty broke _and_ miserable,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”

The rain dripped around them.

“Not to be that person,” Michelle said. “But can you tell me about how your whole deal works?”

Ah, right. Scientist.

“You mean the vigilantism?” Peter clarified.

Michelle said nothing. Sam looked to the side, where a little puddle had formed in the very corner of their alcove. He wasn’t ready for that. Peter wouldn’t make him.

“Everyone’s got their reasons,” Peter said, treading carefully. “Is there something specific you wanted to know?”

Michelle leaned forward with her elbows on her knees.

“Yeah, actually,” she said. “You know, it’s weird because I went to school with the Human Torch way back when, and he was nothing like you guys.”

With--?

With--?

“Sorry, I don’t know what you mean,” Peter said. “Like I said, we’re pretty broke and miserable just like everyone else in this city.”

“Yeah, see that’s the part that doesn’t make sense,” Michelle said coolly. “You’re pretty, broke, and miserable but you don’t have to be, do you? Both of you. You, Blindspot, you made an invisibility suit. People would kill for that kind of thing. You could make millions off it. And you, Spidey, you’re out here holding up whole buildings. Why do that by yourself? Why not join the Avengers or something and actually get some recognition for all the shit you do?”

For the barest of seconds, Peter smelt something floral.

It smelt like a turquoise scarf and a dying candle. 

Sam had gone silent. Peter found his hand between them and laid his own on top of it, interlacing their fingers.

“Everyone has their reasons,” Peter told him more than Michelle.

He looked up and found Michelle and Miranda staring his grip. He didn’t move his. Sam turned his whole face away.

“Sorry,” Michelle said. “Didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

No, she had. That was the point. This was a test, and Peter despised it, but like hell was he going to let that dog lie.

“You’ve got it mixed up,” he said before he could stop himself. “You’re thinking of us like we’re some smattering of random people.” Sam’s hand relaxed under his and let Peter's fingers curl in deeper. Peter lifted his chin.

“But it’s not us who’re scattered and alone,” he said quietly. “If you want real loneliness, you oughta turn around and look the other way. Look at the Avengers. Look at the Fantastic Four. _They’re_ the ones who are lost.”

Sam’s shoulder pressed into his own.

“ _They’re_ the ones who are confused. We know what we stand for. We know who we fight for.”

“We have each other,” Sam added quietly.

“It’s a privilege to be a vigilante in this city,” Peter said. “I’ve never met people more reliable than those who share a mask. They’re who I turn to when shit goes south. Them and the city. They’re the only ones we can count on.”

“They’re the only ones who matter,” Sam said.

The only ones.

Michelle’s lips had gone slack and her brow folded itself over into wrinkles. Slowly, it started to smooth out. Her eyes softened. The rain softened with them.

“I see,” she said. “You’re a family. A community, even.”

Peter dipped his head once. The edge of Sam’s mask brushed the seam between Peter’s arm and shoulder, pleading this time.

And yeah. It was time to go.

“It was nice meeting you, Michelle,” Peter said, standing up. We’ll see you around sometime.”

They went back west. Matt was waiting for them. He was a little confused when Sam dug himself into his side and clung to his ribs, but he didn’t question it. He simply lifted his arm and laid it between Sam’s shoulders.

“What happened?” he asked Peter.

An interrogation.

A misunderstanding.

A reminder that people struggled to understand who they were and why they were, even with the words of the horse’s mouth to guide them.

Matt frowned his way and held out his other hand. He pulled Peter in with the sweep of his fingers. He wrapped his arm around Peter’s back, too, and hugged him close.

He was warm. He felt like two framed photos with tarnished edges. Like lines of braille worn dull by calloused skin. He smelt lightly of incense.

Like family.

Peter closed his eyes.

Good authors too, who once knew better words now only use four letter words--

Four letter words.

Like ‘help.’

_Help._

“Help.”

Wade’s arms were bigger than Matt’s. Wade’s home was warmer. Ness sat on the floor while Matt ran fingers through Sam’s hair on the far side of the couch. He was meticulous about it. Sam closed blue and black eyes slowly with each pull.

“That’s shit, kid,” Wade said quietly.

“Thank you for telling us,” Matt said.

Peter squeezed his own fingers; pushed his thumb into the skin over his knuckles and rolled it around, one knuckle after the other after the other. It didn’t hurt, but he couldn’t lift his eyes from it.

“Ben, honey,” Ness said, “You’re still grieving.”

Right. Okay. That’s what this was?

In Peter’s peripheral vision, he saw Wade press his lips together and drag one of his cracking hands across his forehead. He blew out a breath and, after a moment, held out his arms.

This was an offer. Peter was no longer in a position to refuse. Things were unraveling. MJ knew who he was. Miranda had recognized him from the news. Johnny had snipped the thread that had held them together. And there had been two fires, now, neither of which he’d thought fast enough to run from.

The world was turning into syrup and Peter felt like he was knee-deep in it, sinking and sinking.

Things were supposed to be getting better. It had been a year now.

It had been a whole year.

“C’mere, Benny.”

Why didn’t it stop? Why did no one seem to be listening even when he told them how things were in his own words. Even when he begged it all to stop, please?

“I gotchu, kiddo. I gotchu. You did the right thing. This is the right thing.”

Was it? How did Wade know?

“We’ve got you. Don’t cry, bub. We’ve got you.”

Starting over.

Getting back up.

Sammy took Peter’s hand and told him that he hated it when he cried. It made him want to cry and that triggered all Matt’s latent dad energy.

Sam pleaded. He said that he couldn’t endure Matt’s latent dad energy any more than he already did; his mom would find out and lose her mind and start trying to get Matt to join her cult again.

Peter listened to him.

Wade was right. It was time to sit back and feel and listen. Peter needed to stop trying to put a bandaid on the world’s wounds when his own were leaving a trail through the forest for the big bad wolf.

He needed to listen.

Sam slept next to him on Wade’s couch with his arm draped across Peter’s middle. Peter watched him and wondered if maybe May was right. Maybe Sam’s name was supposed to be on his future wedding invitations. Maybe this thing that he’d had with Johnny had lasted exactly as long as it needed to.

You were supposed to marry your best friend, right?

May had. Wade had. Matt was going to one of these days.

Peter thumbed some hair off of Sam’s cheek and rolled over as carefully he could so as not to disturb him. He opened his phone.

**PP:** hey johnny. I’m sure MJ told you I’m pretty fucking upset with you.

He laid the phone against his chest and closed his eyes. It didn’t take long.

**JS:** All I do is apologize to you.

 **PP:** it sure seems that way, doesn’t it?

 **JS:** I don’t know why it’s so hard for us to talk. It didn’t used to be this hard, did it?

 **PP:** no, it always was. For me, at least.

 **JS:** why didn’t you say something?

 **PP:** I’m in the middle of a life crisis right now, Johnny. I’m not going to lie. But I’m tired of playing games. I’m so tired. So I think I’ve just got to know: did we ever know each other? Or were you hiding things from me like I was hiding them from you?

Sam’s arm shifted and he cuddled in closer.

**JS:** I was hiding shit.

 **PP:** thank god. I thought I was the only one.

 **JS:** No, you’re definitely worse. Don’t even get started there.

 **PP:** wow.

 **JS:** I don’t get you.

 **PP:** lol same.

 **JS:** you don’t get you?

 **PP:** no I don’t get YOU

 **PP:** I never knew what you wanted from me

 **PP:** I never understood why you always wanted to be around

 **PP:** I never felt welcome in your house or with your people

 **PP:** I just don’t GET you Johnny. I’ve been with other people now. And it’s been so easy. And when it was just you and me it was always so easy. But the second we started trying to make it into something, it all got hard and confusing.

 **JS:** Oh

 **JS:** dude why the fuck didn’t you say anything then???

 **JS:** I was trying to give you your space since you always looked 2 seconds from screaming

 **JS:** I thought you didn’t want to be in my space. So I thought I’d go to your space??? Because you’d be happier there?

 **PP:** I WAS. I appreciate that! But it made me feel isolated from everything happening in your life and so I thought you didn’t want me in it.

 **JS:** NO. I thought you didn’t want to be seen with me and I was and am still too fucking stupid to know how to navigate that.

 **PP:** you’re not stupid stop calling yourself stupid why do you always do that? It’s so annoying. Christ. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be seen with you, it’s just that you have negative privacy and for us to hang together, we’d have had to gone to your place which felt like WAY off limits because your family hates me

 **JS:** they never hated you

 **PP:** UH. That’s a lie. They def hated me. Your sister? Her vibes were terrible, man. And Richards? He looks at people like me like he wants to study us.

 **JS:** Dude, that’s just how they are. They’re awkward, uber protective nerds. They’ve never changed and I’m not going to ask them to. Anyways, what about Ben? He likes you.

 **PP:** he tolerates me at best because a jew that forsakes another jew is kind of a piece of shit.

 **JS:** HHHH. Peter, none of them hate you. And even if they did, they’d get over it because they love ME. They did it for my abusive piece of shit ex and you’re not even an eighth as terrible as her.

 **JS:** and anyways, while we’re here, I guess I’ll say that your people made me feel the same way. DP hates the F4 and DD nearly took off two of my brother in law’s knuckles, my guy. Your folks haven’t exactly been welcoming.

 **PP:** that’s probably because your folks keep telling them that what they’re doing doesn’t mean shit

 **JS:** Peter some of them kill people.

 **PP:** Johnny, the Avengers kill people. The F4 have killed people. DP only kills people that he needs to and DD doesn’t kill folks as a rule. Luke and Jessica have only ever taken lives in self defense. You’re mixing us all up with the Punisher who does, in fact, kill people, but if you consider how many people the people he murders have killed themselves, you might see even him in a different light.

 **PP:** this is exactly the thing. Don’t you see it? Y’all don’t understand why we do what we do and then chock it up to us being like an entirely different species that should be reformed.

 **JS:** listen I get that, but there are REASONS behind that too. You guys aren’t regulated. You don’t answer to anyone and yeah okay, maybe us and the Avengers have caused some deaths, but it was in the name of preventing even more.

 **PP:** so that makes it okay??? Ironman fucking TOTALLED hell’s kitchen and then bought up nearly half of a block and that’s fine because he saved the other half?? Dude, all that’s happened from that shit is more poverty which makes people more desperate and that makes more work for DD, which he then gets shat on for taking care of. Tell me how that’s fair.

 **JS:** I’m not saying it’s fair. Peter I don’t want to argue about this, okay?

 **PP:** you never want to argue. This is why we didn’t go anywhere.

 **JS:** wait so it’s my fault for not arguing?

 **PP:** it’s not your fault, it’s no one’s fault. But if no one talks about what they’re feeling ever then everyone leaves confused and upset, okay??

 **JS:** No. not okay. I don’t want to argue. I hate arguing. It’s better if we don’t argue.

 **PP:** Johnny if you don’t argue with me and tell me what you’re feeling and what you’ve been feeling here and now then I’m going to try to move on.

 **JS:** what does that mean?

 **PP:** I mean that I have another shot at something and he’s right next to me and he loves my aunt and she loves him and I love him.

 **PP:** I want to love both of you. But I’ve been through some shit and I can’t fucking deal with unspoken boundaries anymore and you’re out here fucking HAUNTING ME and throwing part of my life that I thought were stable into chaos.

 **PP:** I am THIS close to a mass breakdown. For the sake of my sanity I need to know where I stand with everyone I hold dear so that I can flip this boat and get back in it. So for fuck’s sake just tell me:

 **PP:** what are we? And what do you want us to be?

 **JS:** Peter if you’re in crisis you need to talk to a therapist, not me.

 **PP:** I can’t. Afford. A therapist. Johnny.

 **JS:** do you want help?

 **PP:** I want you to stop avoiding the argument and talk to me.

 **JS:** I can’t do that.

 **PP:** why not?

 **JS:** I just can’t.

 **PP:** is it me who needs therapy, Johnny?

 **JS:** I’m in therapy.

 **PP:** Fire your shrink. They aren’t helping you. Answer my question.

 **JS:** I DON’T KNOW. Okay?? I don’t know. I never knew. I thought I knew, but I don’t know. And I realize I should know. I recognize that I fucked up. I know I’m jealous. I know it’s gross and I have no right to be.

 **PP:** jealous of who? There’s no one to be jealous of.

 **JS:** there IS, though??? MJ knows more about you than I do and I took your virginity, Parker. We were together. For a whole year. Shouldn’t I have known about what you were going through at school? About your friends? Your neighbors?

 **PP:** MJ and I have known each other since we were 14. This is a false comparison.

 **JS:** I KNOW. It’s irrational.

 **JS:** that guy? The one who called you a monster? I’m jealous of him too, you know that?

 **JS:** and Gwen, too. Disgusting as that is. MJ said you loved her. She said she made you smile like she was your whole world. I tried, man. I wanted to be that person for you.

 **PP:** Dude, real talk? Fire your fucking shrink. Clearly you haven’t worked through this. What the hell happened to you, Johnny? Why’re you so convinced that there can only be one?

 **JS:** What do you mean?

 **PP:** You’re obsessed with what a family looks like. It has to be Reed and Sue. A mom and dad. Some kids. Two friendly uncles. Have you ever considered that there’s an alternative to that shit? That people can come in and out of your life? That family can be a bunch of whackjobs with issues who don’t know each other’s every thought and feeling?

Sam made a soft sound and Peter slapped the phone against his chest again. His blood pressure was climbing to the fucking _moon_. He couldn’t believe that Sam hadn’t woken up sooner.

“What’s the matter?” Sam asked him hazily.

“Nothing, you’re okay. Go back to sleep,” Peter told him.

“You’re lyin’. The fuck’re you lyin’ for?”

See, Johnny? It could be this easy.

“Trying to tie up a loose end with Candlestick,” Peter said. “He’s being infuriating about it.”

Sam’s eyes glowed in the dark. They flickered once from a blink.

“Gimme,” he said.

“Sammy, no.”

“No, gimme.”

“ _Sam_. Dude, that _hurt_.”

“Good. I’ve got rabies. You’ve got 24 hours to live. Give me the phone.”

You know what? Fine. Take it.

Sam flopped over in triumph and Peter’s heart seized when he remembered the earlier message. This wasn’t how he wanted Sam to find out. He jerked to take the phone back but stilled when he found Sam already typing.

Sam paused and the phone buzzed. He glared at it for a moment, then he started again.

He snorted and tapped one more message before shoving the thing into Peter’s chest and pulling the blanket Wade had lent them over his head.

“Night, Romeo,” he mumbled.

Peter stared. He looked back at the phone.

**PP:** hi torchy, this is Peter’s friend. Your abandonment issues can be seen from space. I don’t even know you and I can see them. The good news is that he’s remained weirdly infatuated with you despite those for the last decade.

 **JS:** I’m sorry??? Did someone give you the right to wade into this discussion??

 **PP:** He definitely has a complex about blonds because of you. No, it is not a coincidence. Yes, you are notoriously jealous. Yes, he is unspeakably difficult to read. Yes, neither of you was/is ready for the drama that is two houses in fair Verona colliding in the street. Those things can all exist simultaneously.

 **PP:** So for the sake of all that is holy, can you both shut the fuck up, fuck it out, and move on with your issues so that the rest of us caught in the middle can FINALLY talk about something else?

 **JS:** ?????

 **JS:** Who ARE you?

Wow, thanks Sam. That was very enlightening.

**JS:** hello?

 **PP:** sorry. Friend.

 **JS:** Did he just call us Romeo and Juliet?

 **PP:** yes and I’m sorry

 **JS:** …he’s not wrong.

 **PP:** I

 **PP:** what

 **JS:** he isn’t, is he? We come from wildly different worlds in the same city. If we weren’t superhero and vigilante, this wouldn’t have ever been a problem, would it?

 **PP:** no. probably not. But that’s a play. This is our reality, Johnny.

 **JS:** yeah and people ended up dead in that play because they went and made things way more complicated than they needed to be, didn’t they?

…okay maybe Sam was onto something, the little shit.

**PP:** I guess.

 **JS:** we’re making this too complicated. Let’s uncomplicate it.

 **PP:** how do we Uncomplicate this? I don’t want to simplify shit. This has been bothering me for YEARS.

 **JS:** yeah okay and I feel that but what if we just started over?

 **PP:** started over.

 **JS:** yeah.

 **PP:** what, hi my name is Peter Parker, I’m spiderman and I find your giant heart and stupid face unfairly attractive?

 **JS:** omg you took my line.

 **JS:** but yeah, exactly.

 **JS:** Hi peter, my name’s Johnny Storm, I’m the human torch and I love your horrible jokes and your terminal awkwardness and your endless compassion for the world.

 **PP:** okay now what?

 **JS:** can I take you to dinner?

 **PP:** no, my potential love interest in laying on my arm.

 **JS:** aDSJFAS:DFLJASDF WHY DO YOU CALL EVEYRONE YOUR LOVE INTEREST???

 **PP:** ITS GENDER NEUTRAL AND LEAVES ROOM FOR UNCERTAINTY

 **JS:** a;dsfkajsdfaasdfsfasdfsdf call me your love interest.

 **PP:** fine. Love interest B, Love interest A is laying on my arm and laughing at me like a dick. I can’t go to dinner with you.

 **JS:** Why am I love interest B??? Surely I’m love interest A.

 **PP:** Because you took some time off to break my back every two and half months for ten years, jackass. I oughta put you as Love interest C, but out of respect for the dead’s need to move on, you’re B. Suck it up.

 **JS:** maybe I will.

 **PP:** good

 **JS:** have dinner with me tomorrow.

 **PP:** I’ll take it under advisement. I’m currently being monitored for self-destructive behavior.

 **JS:** …takeout?

 **PP:** fine.

 **JS:** great I’ll order it and bring it over. Where are you?

 **PP:** at DP’s place.

 **JS:** he will skewer me.

 **PP:** No he won’t and we’ll eat on the roof.

 **JS:** okay sure. I’ll bring a coat. You may join me in it if you feel so inclined.

 **PP:** how violently presumptuous of you.

 **JS:** are you flirting?

 **PP:** no actually I’m still angry as shit.

 **JS:** it’s weird when you say exactly what you’re feeling.

 **PP:** Johnny. I need to sleep. It’s 3am. Talk more tomorrow.

 **JS:** okay good night.

 **PP:** good night.

_Finally_.

He threw the phone over the back of the couch so that he couldn’t look at it anymore. His heart was still racing.

“You’re a mess, Peter Parker.”

He dropped his head back.

“I saw what you said.”

Fuck. This shitshow would never end, would it?

Sam untangled himself from his blanket nest and wriggled up so that he could get an elbow leaned up onto the center of Peter’s chest. He cradled his chin and looked down his nose at Peter.

“Just kill me now,” Peter told him.

“I love you, too,” Sam said like a bullet.

Somehow, it didn’t take the air out of Peter’s lungs. It felt like something else. Something warm.

“Sam.”

“It’s okay. Between me and Torchy, I’d pick him, too.”

No. It wasn’t like that.

“I want you both,” Peter whispered. “Why do I have to pick one? Why do I always have to pick just _one_?”

Sam shook his head and then let his arm extend across Peter’s chest again. He sunk down until his face was level with Peter’s ribs.

“You don’t have to choose,” he said so quietly that Peter almost missed it.

Peter breathed in and sighed.

“Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated,” he chanted to himself. Sam huffed a laugh.

“You got one for everything,” he said. “It’s okay, Peter. Really.”

It wasn’t.

“Let me feel this out,” Peter said. “Let me see if Johnny can handle it.”

Peter felt Sam nod against his ribs. He rolled over and caught Sam's cheek before he turned away.

“Hey,” he said. “If he’s not ready, that doesn’t mean that we can’t be.”

Sam’s eyelashes brushed against his finger. He shrugged.

“If that’s what you want,” he said.

“Is that what _you_ want?” Peter asked.

Sam caught his hand and leaned his whole face into it.

“I want to be patient,” he said. “And for my friend to have an easier life. I want us to make both of our lives easier. Even if we don’t end up with much at the end of it. I want to share what little we do have with you.”

Yeah. Yeah, okay.

“I’m keeping you,” Peter said. He laid a loud, fat kiss on Sam’s cheek and scrambled over before the sound of disgust could be followed by fingers jabbing into his sides.


	8. brilliant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, look at this guy,” This man with Peter’s heavy brows and rush of untameable hair joked. He tossed a cocky thumb back Johnny’s way. “One look and he’s speechless. I’m just that handsome.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooo boy. 
> 
> References to child abuse, CSA, domestic violence in the form of emotional abuse and neglect, and a whole lot of grief.

Sue’s lips nearly vanished as Johnny stood by the door, putting his coat on.

Her arms were crossed tight over her chest. Her hair hung over her shoulders in loose curls, damp in parts. She wanted to say something. Johnny already knew what it was. He did. But, loathe as he was to admit that he was wrong, he could also admit that Peter had a point somewhere in his waving fields of fury.

What stood between the two of them wasn’t a wall or a doorway or some fogged up glass window that Johnny had failed to see through.

It was a double-standard.

Johnny had built himself into a corner with them for _years_ now. He was blocking out the sun with clouded glass. He was telling himself that he had to be polite, had to be soft, had to be understanding and quiet and confident and stronger than vibranium. He had to be everything that the tabloids said he was and he wasn’t. He had to crash hard and get up with a smile. He had to be purposeful.

Every action was either light as a flame or drowning in its own gravity, like a black hole.

Peter had named his cat after one, the prophetic bastard.

God, and he was a bastard too, wasn’t he?

This whole time, Johnny had pictured him, of all people, as a superhuman bouncy-ball. _Peter_ was the one lighter than air. He was helium. Hydrogen. He soared higher than everyone—sought the company of flying machines both flesh and tower. His aloofness and the eddies that he buried himself in up there with the birds, clambering around windows, had been captivating.

Johnny had been lured in by his poetry. His mystery. This erotic pull that exploded in raucous laughter and stomach-dropping falls.

Peter Parker spun love songs to the city of New York and Johnny had fallen in love that art, so deeply, so suddenly, and so uncritically that he’d mistaken the art for the artist.

Sue stood in the kitchen under lights three shades too white and wanted for Johnny, more than anything she’d ever wanted for him, an uncomplicated life. She wanted Johnny to have everything that she could give him. A brother—two brothers—a sister, a mother, a niece, a nephew, a home, _stability_.

She wanted these things for him, because they’d been taken away from her time and time and time again.

Standing in the kitchen, with eyes as blue as skylights and damp hair and magenta yoga pants that didn’t suit a damn thing about her, Johnny loved her so much that his eyes burned and he almost couldn’t meet her gaze.

“Johnny,” she said. “Where are you going?”

She knew.

Johnny had spent an extra few moments with the kids, checking Frankie’s homework over Val’s head, and playing dumb when Frankie flubbed one—playing the dunce to let the kid work through it and pick out the mistake himself.

Peter was right. _Fuck_ , Peter was right.

Johnny couldn’t keep calling himself stupid. There were already plenty of others who already thought he was.

“Peter reached out,” he lied.

“Johnny—”

“We’re going to have dinner.”

“Isn’t it a little soon? It’s only been a month since Lyja and—”

“He fell in love with someone else,” Johnny felt slip out of his mouth.

The foyer seemed to freeze in time. Johnny let it hang for a long moment. He waited until Sue’s shocked eyebrows started a descent into concern.

“But you’re going to see him?” she asked.

“Yeah, I am,” Johnny said.

Silence again.

“Johnny.”

“I’m not cheating.”

“Don’t do this.”

“Sue.”

“It still matters—don’t let those people tell you who you are. They’re tabloids. No one believes what they say. You’re better than this.”

He didn’t have anything to say back to that. Nothing that Sue would understand, at least. He’d never realized how deep the chasm between their lives could be from a single difference.

What if he had been born straight? Would he have agreed with her? Would everything have made more or less sense?

Would it have been any simpler?

“I love him,” Johnny said.

Sue’s eyes dropped and her head shook, sweeping hair from side to side. Johnny’s throat started to close.

“It’s over, Johnny,” Sue said. “Let it be over. You tried.”

No.

Peter wanted to try.

“You just said he’s in love with someone else. You can’t win someone back from that. This isn’t a game. It’s been more than a decade.”

She wasn’t understanding what he was saying between each of his syllables. It wasn’t her fault. She’d held Johnny’s hand on a path towards stability for so, so long. And she wouldn’t let him fall now. She still wanted to hold his hand.

“Can we let it be complicated?” he asked in a quiet voice.

Sue’s eyes said that her gut said no, but she’d always been too indulgent with him.

He swallowed.

“You’re the best sister I could ask for,” he said. “You’ve protected me for so long. From myself. From others. Can I—Sue. Let me find my way here.”

“There is no way,” Sue said. “Peter’s out of the game. Let him be happy with whoever it is he’s—”

“Blindspot,” Johnny said abruptly.

Sue cut herself off.

“I know it’s him,” Johnny said. “He’s Daredevil’s apprentice. Michelle Jones told me she met him and Peter the other day. She said Peter held his hand.”

Sue recoiled.

“Michelle? I thought she hated you,” she said. “You can’t be sure that she’s not doing this to get back at you for whatever grudge she had in highschool.”

Johnny huffed a little laugh.

“She doesn’t have a grudge,” he said. “The only grudge she had was that I refused to join the Acadec team. She hasn’t been in the city for like, two years now. She just thought I should know; she and MJ talk, I guess. And I think they both want something like fairness for us—me and Peter—together or apart.”

Sue reached a hand behind her sheafs of hair to hold her neck. She still refused to meet his eyes.

“Blindspot’s an ember,” she said. “He’s too wily. He won’t last.”

“A flame doesn’t last any longer,” Johnny pointed out. “I want to meet him. And Peter.”

“Both?” Sue asked in surprise, finally dragging her eyes up from the tile. Johnny managed a little smile for her.

“Both,” he said. “Who knows? Maybe what I need isn’t a ‘true love,’ but a ‘many.’”

The words drifted to the floor. There was a creak. A door opening. Ben peeked into the kitchen cautiously.

“Everything alright?” he asked.

Sue held Johnny’s gaze. He breathed as evenly as he could.

“I’m going to find out,” he said.

Come on, Sue. You _do_ understand. You _always_ understand. You’re brilliant. Try.

“T-tell him hi.”

Thank _god._

“Tell him we miss him.”

Johnny’s throat hurt worse than it had before for all the opposite reasons. Sue swiped lightly at the corner of her eye.

“Tell me how it goes, when you come back,” she said, turning around.

Ben cocked his head at whatever expression she was making. Johnny dipped his own head at her back.

“You bet your ass I will,” he said. “Ready the tissues. If I come home early, it means we’re getting married.”

Sue scoffed and violently waved him off without turning around. He ducked out the door with a heart ready to burst.

Trust was a funny thing. It exploded into fireworks. It made Johnny feel giddy and silly.

It had been ages since Sue had let go of his hand without him tearing it away. His empty palm felt like freedom.

He swept himself off down Madison and found a bodega’s light to stand in out on the street. He dug out his phone and wrapped an arm around the metal pole of a bustop sign.

**JS:** hey you. what’s your and your boo’s poison?

 **PP:** HES NOT MY BOO

Johnny giggled like a kid into his wrist.

**JS:** my bad. Love interest A.

 **PP:** he says that you don’t have to do that.

 **JS:** I want to. And I’d like to meet him, if that’s not too weird?

 **PP:** uuuuuuuuuuuh I’m getting ‘it’s hella fucking weird’ from him since we are apparently only allowed to be friends until I am approved by his mother. He’s lactose intolerant tho? Don’t do pizza.

 **JS:** how the fuck does he live?

 **PP:** oh no. he doesn’t care. I’m saving him from himself rn. Burritos?

 **JS:** can do. Any special order?

 **PP:** I’m being told again not to let you buy anything for him.

Awww.

**PP:** Here, I’ll give you a pin to somewhere safe. Just get 2 #4s.

That was easy enough.

The smell of corn and chili and cilantro was enough to improve anyone’s mood, but the warm bag in Johnny’s hand felt especially like happiness as he endured the trauma of the train to the Upper West side.

He remembered Wade Wilson’s apartment’s location vaguely from picking up Arcturus all those years ago. Not to worry, though, Peter had a google maps pin for everything.

There was probably a whole team at Google who knew without knowing exactly who Spiderman was. Johnny pitied those schmucks.

He arrived to the building and put in the code Peter had sent him for the door. He took the elevator up as high as it would go, then dipped around the corner into a stairwell so cold that he could see his breath. Florescent lines buzzed overhead.

A few moths fluttered around their edges.

It felt like sign.

Johnny watched them until he ran out of light.

The roof access door was old and there was peeling striped tape around its edges. It was heavy, but not difficult to open.

The roof was empty. Freezing. Johnny was glad for his coat.

He looked around and his heart started to slow.

There was no one. Nothing.

Was this a joke? Had Peter gotten cold feet?

He stuffed the bag into the crook of his arm and pulled his phone out of his pocket, only to drop both when an arm burst into existence around his neck and immediately pulled up into his throat.

Fuckin’ _A._

“Say ‘uncle.’”

Fuckin’ A, you fuckin’ menace.

“ _Say it_.”

Who let this guy get this strong? Christ. Johnny was gasping here. Fine. Have it your way, asshole.

Johnny sunk fingers into the arm and leaned back, preparing to hurl Mr. Agitating himself onto his back flat in front of him, but was stopped by a “Dude. Are you serious?”

Peter stopped trying to wrench his arm out of Johnny’s grip. His front was warm against Johnny’s back, even more so when he went all languid and relaxed.

“Fancy meetin’ you here, toots,” he said to the owner of the other voice.

“Let him go.”

Peter made a sad noise.

“But how will he know that I missed him?” he asked.

There was only silence. Peter’s heat crammed itself impossibly closer to Johnny’s shoulders.

“Stop that,” Peter whined.

“I’m not doing anything,” the voice said.

“You’re makin’ a _face_.”

“Make me stop makin’ a face, then.”

“I _can’t_.”

“You can, you’re just a stubborn piece of shit. Be nice.”

Peter’s arm relaxed and Johnny benevolently let it slip out of his grip. He spun around as Peter slipped off and was punched in the gut by a whole new reality.

It had been eleven years, nearly, since he’d seen Peter’s face. He’d changed so much. But the smirk, for example, drew itself out wider and wider into something more familiar the longer Johnny catalogued the lines and shapes in front of him.

“Hey, look at this guy,” This man with Peter’s heavy brows and rush of untameable hair joked. He tossed a cocky thumb back Johnny’s way. “One look and he’s speechless. I’m just that handsome.”

“You look like a sparrow that slammed into a window,” the owner of the other voice deadpanned.

Peter’s eyes crinkled deeper than they ever had at the corners.

He had tiger’s eyes. Tiger’s eyes, won’t you be so lucky, right there, taking Johnny’s breath away in cold roof lighting.

He felt sixteen years old again, breathing clouds into the air over Frederico’s. His knees felt a little weak at the red curve of Peter’s lips and his still-absurd eyelashes and a jaw that had somehow both slimmed out and hardened. His chin was as pointy as ever. His freckles had faded and been replaced by a slight ruddiness.

Johnny wanted to kiss him right there. To take off his coat and suffocate Peter in it. To hold his ribcage close to his own and tell him ‘thank you’ without saying the words, for somehow seeing the iron core inside Johnny’s own chest, where everyone else was dazzled by the ignited gas around it.

“You’re a fucking mess,” he snapped instead.

Peter barked a horribly endearing laugh in his face and lurched away from him to go seize the other person on the roof’s arm before they were successful in what appeared to be an abrupt getaway.

“No, no, stay,” Peter pleaded with him.

Johnny couldn’t see him very well, but he’d seen the shapes of Blindspot now, after some thorough googling, and the stocky build was unmistakable. The rumors, for once, appeared to be true.

“I can’t,” Blindspot said.

“No, you can, come on,” Peter said. “It won’t be long.”

“No,” Blindspot maintained. “Sensei’ll kill me.”

Daredevil. Right.

“He won’t mind,” Peter flat out lied to this poor kid.

“He might, actually,” Johnny said.

Blindspot stiffened and then threw a hand out his way.

“See??” he said. “Even the mannequin understands.”

Johnny couldn’t contain his laugh.

“If he so much as smells whatever fancy-ass cologne Christmas Lights over there has doused himself in, that’s it for me, Peter. I’m condemned to the lowest level of gym hell. I’m _boxing_ , Peter. For six hours.”

Johnny’s eyebrows shot up before he could stop them.

“Six hours?” he repeated.

“Yeah, man,” Blindspot volleyed his way neatly, “I’m supposed to bite people like you on contact.”

Ah. Okay, yes. Daredevil’s apprentice confirmed.

Johnny offered a hand. Peter glanced his way and then lit up with one of those blinding sunshine smiles. He gestured.

“He’s offerin’,” he said.

Blindspot mugged hard at him. Hard enough that Johnny could actually finally see him a bit clearer.

He had tan skin and a round face, but the shadows were doing something weird to his brow and eyes, and Johnny couldn’t get much more than that.

“No,” Blindspot said. “I said I’d wait with you. I waited. I’m goin’ back down before the old man hears some shit and scrambles up here to cleanse me of the scourge.”

Wow. Those were fighting words.

Johnny watched as Peter made sad faces that would probably have killed other folks and found himself unsuccessful. BT had had enough. He left and didn’t look back. Peter watched him go and deflated a little.

Johnny waited until the roof access door had closed once again to stoop down and pick up the burritos and his phone.

“Sorry about that,” Peter said behind him. “I thought I could jedi mind trick him into staying.”

Johnny huffed.

“It’s fine,” he said. “He seems?”

“Standoffish?” Peter answered for him when Johnny came back up to face him. He was crinkling his eyes again. “It’s okay,” he said. “He’s just shy.”

Uh-huh. Johnny was going to let him think that. It was only fair.

“Seems cute,” he said.

“Ehn. I wouldn’t say cute,” Peter said. “He don’t like the word.”

Oh. Okay?

Peter tipped his head a fraction to the side and then snapped into action. He was fast. One second Johnny was watching him, the next he was right up in Johnny’s face, eyes flicking all around, taking him in.

“Uh, hi?” Johnny said. “Personal space?”

He got nothing. Only a squint.

“You look the same,” Peter said.

“Is that? A bad thing?” Johnny asked.

“I don’t know,” Peter mumbled with a finger threatening to poke Johnny’s jaw. He snatched it away before it made contact.

“Let’s sit,” he said. “It’s cold as balls up here.”

Peter sucked at retaining heat. He’d always been shit at it. Watching him be shit at it while attempting to eat a burrito brought on a wave of affection greater than Johnny could have predicted.

“You’re so cute,” he said.

The burrito eating ceased in favor of suspicion. Peter wiped furiously at his cheeks.

He snapped through emotions at the speed of light. It was like he’d taken all the feelings he’d had as a kid, concentrated them, and then plugged them into a pinball machine.

“This is flirting,” Peter finally decided.

“I’m tryin’ here,” Johnny snickered. “Do you not flirt?”

“I do,” Peter said. “Badly. Wanna hear?”

Yeah, Johnny absolutely did.

It was so easy, sitting up high in the cold, listening to Pete rocketing through pick up lines that could make a nun blush and pop culture references from the 1980s and puns. So, so many puns. He made himself laugh so hard he choked.

It was so easy.

“So are you just gonna sit there or are you gonna talk?” Peter accused him out of exactly nowhere. He brandished the end of his burrito like a bayonet. Johnny glanced from it up to those tiger’s eyes and found that he didn’t actually want to—to talk, that is.

“I dunno,” he said.

“Uh-uh. No. You buy me food, we talk. That’s how it works,” Peter said. “So talk.”

Oh, that was how it was, was it?

“Are we friends or are we gonna fuck?”

Johnny choked on his soda.

“ _Crass_ ,” he snapped.

Peter cackled. Johnny shook his head in faux disapproval until Peter settled down and grinned at him expectantly.

He was so different. Eyebrows and Tiger’s eyes aside, the Peter Parker that Johnny had known had always been so reserved, so skittish, so guarded. This person was none of those things—outwardly at least. His sunny demeanor was his armor now, and Johnny could see just from sitting here that it was nigh unbreakable.

“You’re amazing,” he said.

“So folks say,” Peter hummed. “You are too, though. Comin’ out here after takin’ on that shit over text. Sam made me read it back. I was such a dick. Sorry, that wasn’t cool.”

Sorry.

Peter said sorry.

 _No one_ said sorry. Only Johnny. The thought made his throat ache like it had back in the foyer.

“Hey. What’s wrong with you?”

Johnny scrubbed at his face and swore.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s—it’s nothing.”

He looked back up to Peter’s face and found it absolutely empty. It felt like a slap. Then a shiver.

“Uh?” he started.

“Who hurt you?” Peter asked.

No emotion. No threats. The words felt like a hand splayed flat and solid over Johnny’s heart.

He bit his lip and considered for a moment not saying anything, but his throat was closing and the question hung in between them on a line of silk that Peter showed no sign of releasing from his grip.

He was different now.

No longer fragile. No longer afraid.

The tears fell hot and fast and Johnny let them.

There were many. Daken, Lyja, Kourtney, Sky, the ones in between who’d lasted a week, a month, long enough for a ghosting to hurt.

He felt like a revolving door, and not a nice one. Not one made out of old wood and glass. An aluminum and plexiglass piece of shit that kept spinning the same collection of old cans and cigarette butts and disintegrating newspaper around and around.

Peter watched him go through each. He watched him list off the bullshit.

The fake deaths, the sudden arrivals, the false pregnancy, the hands holding his when he didn’t want them held, the ones snatched back when he did. The sex—some good, some confusing, some painful for all the right and wrong reasons.

At some point in the last year or so, he’d found himself looking at hands outstretched to him and having to force himself to smile. It didn’t come as naturally as it had been before. There was always a pause now.

And throughout it all, Peter didn’t touch him. Not once.

It was—

It was—

Johnny hadn’t realized how much he didn’t want to be touched. His hands felt like they weren’t even in existence, like they were floating in space somewhere else. He sort of wanted to join them, wherever they were.

Eventually the words ran out and he was brought back down to earth by floodlights and tigers’ eye. The polished stone sat, half-lit by lights from surroundings roofs and the city below. The rest of his body threw shadows that didn’t dare shift in the face of his stillness. Johnny couldn’t remember Peter ever being this still.

It had been like he was always holding onto the Earth to keep himself steady as a kid. Now, he melded himself into the shape of the city around him.

“That’s a lot to carry, Johnny,” he said, unflinching.

It was. It felt like it.

“I don’t want to carry it anymore,” Johnny admitted, pulling his knees up to his face and leaning his chin on them.

“But?” Peter nudged.

Johnny let his eyes fall half-shut.

“I have to,” he said.

Peter looked way from him, back out at the blue glow flecked with reds and yellows before them.

“You saved me.”

Johnny squeezed his eyes all the way closed.

“You were my hero, the night I needed someone,” Peter said. “Red and Wade have always been grateful to you for that, I don’t know if you knew that.”

They’d—what?

Peter huffed a little.

“I was a pretty fucked up kid, man,” he said. “I never told you the whole thing, but when I was eight, I had a babysitter. Never had one up until that one. Never had one after.”

 _Jesus_.

“I get it,” Peter said. “What it feels like to be used. It’s the worst feeling in the world. Like, you spend all this time trying to decide if you’re angry or empty or frustrated or betrayed or just fucking scared.”

Or just fucking scared.

“I was so scared,” Peter mumbled.

Yeah.

“My dad was a surgeon,” Johnny revealed, finally reopening his eyes. “I don’t remember much of him, but he used to scream, like all the time. He’d yell at mom. He’d yell at Sue. He’d yell at me. I used to cry every time, and I hated it. And Sue would pick me up and take me to another room and tell me not to cry. That it would be okay, but she’d be shaking, you know, because she was scared, too. After mom died, it all—” he cleared his throat. “It got really bad.”

“He’d just scream at us,” He remembered, dragging the heels of his palms against his cheeks and back along his jaw towards his neck. “He took it out on Sue most days. Drank. Gambled. It was shit; we had no money. Sue never told me—no one ever told me, but there were folks pounding on the doors every day. Just _hammering_ , Pete. That shit makes me break out in a sweat to this day.”

“He went to jail, my old man—not because he did anything wrong,” Johnny huffed. “A guy broke into our place and threatened him and me and Sue. Shot himself like a goddamn fool. Folks said my pops did it and he didn’t even _try_ to fight it. Just laid down and took it. Didn’t see him again until Frankie was born and he didn’t stick around. Didn’t say a damn thing to me, you know that? It was like he didn’t know who I was—which, you know, is fair. I didn’t recognize him either.”

“You never talked about your folks,” Peter noted.

Johnny looked down at his ankles.

“I try to forget,” he said. “It’s easier to be Susan Storm’s little brother than Franklin Storm’s son.” He cleared his throat again. “This is all to say that arguing makes me want to shut up and find somewhere to hide,” he said. “I can’t argue—not with you, not with anyone. I just start bawlin’. It’s like I’m that little kid again and Sue’s making me hide in the dark.”

He heard Peter take in a deep breath and then let it out.

“Johnny, I had no idea,” he said. “I’m sorry for triggering you.”

Trig—oh. Yeah, it was triggering, wasn’t it? Huh.

“I’m not mad,” Johnny said. “I’m tired. Tired of being a door. Tired of people leaving. They always leave. My therapist says that it’s not shit that I did and that I’m better off with these people out of my life. And I _agree_ , but every time I look over my shoulder, there are all these goddamn _tabloids_ , Peter. The press. The papps. They don’t give a shit. They ask me if I cheated and if I slept with so-and-so and if I’m the dad of such-and-such or if I’m starting a fling with whothefuckever. And it makes me wonder like, I dunno. Maybe I did? Maybe I am? Did I do those things? I don’t remember doing them, but maybe I did? It’s like I’m being gaslit from the second I leave the house to the second I’m back in it, and with Ly—some of the people I came home to, it didn’t stop. I get lost in all the speculation and accusation and—yeah.”

“Panic attack?” Peter asked.

Johnny almost snorted.

“Panic attack,” he confirmed.

“Fun shit. I didn’t know what they looked like until Red had one,” Peter hummed. “Or—yeah, no, that’s not true. I’d seen ‘em before then, but never saw someone who had panic attacks like _I_ did until Red. He shut the fuck down; didn’t say a damn word, didn’t move. Just curled up and held on. It was like he couldn’t get the words out. Freaked out when anyone tried to touch ‘im. And I remember watchin’ and my knees shakin’ and Wade pickin’ me up and leavin’ me with Ness in the kitchen. He knew Red was gonna trigger me; Ness knew, too. So we sat on the floor and I started wailin’, you know that? And she came over and hugged me and I wanted to fight her, but then of course, I was slapped with the realization that Red was fightin’ Wade in the other room and I couldn’t do that to Ness.”

This hurt.

“They’re lookin’ after me right now,” Peter admitted. “Because Wade’s the only one who can hold me down when I start fightin’, and I don’t want to hurt May.”

 _Christ_.

“We’re a mess,” Johnny said.

“A fucking mess,” Peter laughed.

“How did we find each other?” Johnny asked the edge of the roof.

“The moths.”

Johnny’s head came up on its own accord. He turned and found Peter smiling up at the sky.

“I remember them,” he said dreamily. “It’s where I met Red. Red introduced me to Wade. Then they introduced me to Luke and Jess and Danny and Misty and Winter and Hawkeye and Colleen and that horrible fucking _Katherine_.”

Katherine?

“Hawkeye but evil,” Peter said. “His apprentice.”

Oh. There were two?

“I owe those moths so much,” Peter said. “I knew they wouldn’t steer me wrong. They brought me you.”

Johnny caught that one in the heart. It had ripples.

“You were my hero when I needed you. I told you this. You saved my life. No one saves Spiderman.”

“No one apologizes to the Human Torch,” Johnny said.

There was a long silence filled by the rush of gentle wind and the sound of cars in the street.

“I love you still, Peter,” Johnny said.

“I love you, too.”

Johnny felt the air leave his lungs.

“I wish it was easier for us back then, but I think we needed to grow,” Peter said.

Johnny brushed at his eye and caught himself mirroring Sue’s gesture in the kitchen. He swallowed back the urge to laugh hysterically.

“Sue doesn’t want me to make you cheat on your guy,” he said.

Peter huffed a little derisively.

“You ain’t gonna make me do shit,” he said. “I dunno if your sister knows this, but I am a notoriously difficult human being.”

Johnny found that he could make his lips quirk up into a smile again. It was watery, but it was still a smile.

“She doesn’t,” he said. “But I think she’s trying to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

Peter finally looked away from the city.

“Gwen always told me that she felt like she was keepin’ me from other people,” he said. “She knew—about the polyamory stuff. Only a few folks know. She didn’t think it was gross or wrong. That’s how I knew I was going to marry her. But, here we are, I guess. Didn’t even get the chance to pick out a ring.”

What a nightmare.

“She would’ve liked Sam, though, I think. She was always interested in Red. People are; he’s a walking enigma. Sam’s freakishly similar to him. They met once before.”

No shit?

Peter sighed.

“She thought he was funny,” he said. “She liked him. She’d be cool with what we’re trying to have now.”

Ah.

“I never met her,” Johnny pointed out.

“No, you didn’t.”

“MJ showed me a picture.”

“Oh? Which one?”

Peter knew exactly which one, but Johnny put on a show of describing it anyways to watch Pete’s face change as he did.

“She liked that one,” Peter said. “I fucked with it in photoshop for hours and ended up trashing the whole thing. She didn’t need more than 5 minutes. Long enough to brighten the brights. Darken the darks. Adjust the warmth—surface level stuff. I kept tryin’ to make her look as special as I saw her, but that’s the thing about art, isn’t it? Try too hard and it all goes to shit.”

Johnny waited. The air was freezing now from the lack of sun.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Pete,” he said.

Peter let out a soft sound of a variety that Johnny was familiar with. It was the cut off choke of someone about to sob. He stood up abruptly.

“Let’s talk about something else,” he said. “Tell me about your cat.”

Peter finally looked back at him with unshed tear glazing his eyes. He sniffed and touched the hem of one of his sleeves to the rim of his right eye.

“Yeah, alright,” he said. “May brought her over a while ago.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't worry, y'all it's gonna get a little lighter soon.


	9. say uncle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **JS:** MJ he’s like 40.
> 
> **MJ:** we call that a dilf

Peter was a liar.

M87 was not a void. She was a whole galaxy, and Blindspot had somehow lifted her and fit the majority of her into his arms. He was scrolling through his phone on the couch when they entered Wade Wilson’s apartment and didn’t move an inch after glancing up.

“What’s he said to you?” he asked his phone dangerously.

“Ease off,” Peter said. “Gimme my child.”

“Shared custody,” Blindspot lobbied without heat. He allowed Peter to seize the cat from him over his shoulder. He still didn’t look up at Johnny. Johnny decided that he wasn’t going to take offense. 

Peter reintroduced M87 to Johnny. She was bigger than Arcturus, if such a thing was possible.

“It’s all fluff,” Peter said lovingly. He manhandled Matey until she was laid against his shoulder like a human child. “It’s all fluff, isn’t it, baby?” he cooed. Matey purred and rubbed her face against his stubble.

Blindspot made a wretching sound.

“Foul dissenter,” Peter hissed at him.

“You feed your cat before you pay your tuition,” Blindspot jabbed.

“You’ve watched every cult flick on Netflix,” Peter shot back.

“It’s _research,_ you bastard.”

“It’s called an obsession, Samuel.”

Blindspot shoved his phone under the cushion he was tucked up against.

“It’s not her fault, she’s old and confused,” he said.

Peter stared at him coolly over the cat’s fur.

“You could try—”

“Don’t say it,” Blindspot said. “We have to cleverer than that. I have a new plan.”

Peter turned back to Johnny with a flat expression. He bounced Matey in his arms.

“Johnny, Sam. Sam, Johnny,” he said. “Make friends. We’re all in this together.”

Blindspot, née Samuel, had real problems. Problems that made Johnny’s problems look like pebbles in a box of cereal. It was like watching a train wreck. Johnny couldn’t tear his attention away for so much as a single second.

“—and so I was like, Mom, changing the name does not make it less of a cult, but then she was like, ‘how dare you talk back to me, I raised you with my own sweat, blood, and tears.’ So obviously I can’t argue with that, but also--MOM. We’re not going back to the fucking cult. We just left the fucking cult. If we go _back_ to the fucking cult, then we both will die, and no one will remember to tell Hannah to close the kitchen cabinets at 2am. You feel me?”

Peter had sat through this story a billion times. He’d checked out. Johnny could do nothing but nod.

“I’ve tried everything,” Blindspot, née Samuel moaned. “I’ve tried the documentaries—she tells me that those people are stupid and she isn’t Christian or rich so no, we weren’t in a cult—I’ve tried replacing all her magazines with articles on brainwashing and she told me that if I touched her shit ever again, she’d send me to one of those Bad Cults in Utah. I’ve even tried getting Hannah to talk shit about Tenfingers in front of her and she laughed at two of her jokes. It’s _right there_. She’s so close. We’re on the verge of a breakthrough, I know it—”

Johnny’s mouth felt a little dry.

“Have you—have you thought of—” he started.

“Don’t say it,” Peter sighed. “He’ll never shut up.”

Johnny turned back and then jumped to see blue, glowing eyes latched onto the side of his face, just daring him to speak the word into the ether.

“Support group?” Johnny went with.

The blue blaze merely narrowed. It did not yield.

“The fuck is support group?” Samuel snapped. “Sounds like the bad thing. Peter, translate.”

“It’s the bad thing,” Peter confirmed. “But with many bodies in a circle.”

“NO therapy,” Samuel threatened Johnny barely a half a second later.

Johnny stared.

“You’re fascinating,” he said.

“You’re blond,” Samuel informed him firmly.

Johnny sort of got it now. Peter was naturally a touch manic, and Samuel was naturally an overthinker. Together, it appeared that Samuel’s ire against all kindness and common sense overwhelmed Peter’s anxiety and made him chill out.

“Once you catch him talking about anything other than cults, he’s really smart,” Peter said as he walked Johnny to the train station.

“I believe it,” Johnny said.

“Red literally refers to training him as adding ‘enrichment activities’ to his daily routine. He only used to do that when he was testing all his Houdini locks on Wade.”

Huh.

“Does Red care that y’all are getting together?” Johnny asked.

Peter paused with his hands in the pockets of the oversized leather jacket. Then shrugged.

“He hasn’t said anything,” he said. “I’m sure he knows, though. Honestly, I think he’s going to have a bigger problem with Sam talking to you. That might take some ironing. We’ll figure it out, don’t worry.”

Johnny grimaced.

“Sorry,” he said.

Peter hip-checked him right off the curb.

“What was that?” he asked over his shoulder.

The dick.

“Not to you,” Johnny said. “To Sam.”

Ignored. Wow.

“Couldn’t hear you there, pal.”

Johnny rolled his eyes.

“Can’t I be sympathetic?” he asked.

“I dunno _can_ you?”

He got home late. The lights were all off in the building. He closed the door as quietly as possible behind him.

He woke up to his alarm blaring through his phone speaker and no less than sixteen messages from MJ asking why he was abandoning her among the rubble like this.

He tried to drown his head in pillow. It didn’t work. As soon as the phone shut off, there was a scrabble and an argument in chipmunk voices outside his door. He squeezed the pillow tighter.

Frankie told Val that she was being ‘irrational.’ It sounded like she hit him. Johnny moaned into the mattress at Reed’s Dad-voice entering the equation. He willed Reed to chase the children away from the door. That’s all he wanted in life. That’s all he’d ever dreamed of. All he’d—

“Knock, knock. Johnny?”

For fuck’s sake.

Val claimed that she got to sit in Uncle Johnny’s chair because he didn’t come quick enough to the table. Johnny let her have it. He had to go be sleep deprived on the floor in the sun. Rufus was holding his spot for him. When he laid down, Rufus sniffed at him in interest and meowed.

“I know,” Johnny said, rubbing his ears through the sound of a breakfast battle behind them. “You smell your sister. You remember her?”

Rufus nosed at his hand and then rustled in to sniff at Johnny’s shoulder.

“Johnny?” Reed asked. “Can you take the monsters to school?”

Val didn’t want to go to daycare. She refused to get in her carseat. Johnny threatened her with riding her nemesis (the subway) if she continued to refuse to comply.

This resulted in a meltdown.

It was going to be a long day in the Richards-Storm-Grimm residence. Johnny could feel it in his bones.

He picked up the child and herded Frankie into his seat. He then spend far too long, strapping Val’s floppy, uncooperative limbs into her seat. He closed the door.

“You’re a star, Uncle Jay,” Sue said from the doorway of the garage.

She was in _great_ spirits.

Wonderful.

Frankie asked him two turns from school if MJ was texting him. Johnny glanced down into the passenger’s seat and saw that, in fact, it was both the MJs. Michelle—who he hadn’t heard from since the night previous, and Mary Jane who was telling him in shorthand what Michelle had already told him.

She wrote whatever the hell it was in all caps.

Johnny elected to deal with that when he was at least one gremlin fewer.

Val screamed in the daycare foyer. Even the staff winced. Johnny apologized to them and got waved off. He dropped down in front of Val and leaned his chin on his palm patiently. Eventually, she realized that he had not yet callously forsaken her and latched onto him.

“You’re my _favorite_ air raid siren,” Johnny told her.

He got something mumbled into his shirt in return.

“Val,” he said. “Let’s make a deal.”

Her little hand scrunched in his collar.

“I’ll tell you a secret, and you go to daycare,” he said.

He felt the evaluation. Val was her father’s daughter. At three, she was weighing up pros and cons. She sniffed.

“What kinda secret?” she mumbled into his neck.

“A big, _big_ one,” Johnny said. “You can’t tell _anyone_. Not even Mom.”

Val gasped and wriggled back to stare up at him with huge eyes.

“Not even Mom?” she repeated.

Johnny cocked a brow.

He left the preschool with a group of staff dying of laughter and trying not to show it.

Big secrets. Big, big secrets.

Reed would learn one day to stop leaving his shoes where Ben could get them. And perhaps one day, too, Ben would stop stuffing the carcasses of silverfish he found in the bathroom into said shoes, then blaming it on the cat.

Johnny didn’t question the terrible shit those two did to each other anymore. Sue told him that it was easier to let it wash over you. They merely lived to terrorize each other in ever-more creative ways.

He unlocked the car door and fell into the driver’s seat and finally, _finally_ opened his phone.

**MJ:** JOHNNNNNNNNNNNNY

**MJ:** JOHNNY

**MJ:** JOHNNY YOU MOTHERFUCKER PETER CAME TO MY HOUUUUUUUUUUSE

**JS:** hey

**MJ:** omg you’re alive

**JS:** he went to your place? When?

**MJ:** just for a minute this morning he said heS GOT A PARTNER

**JS:** lol

**MJ:** what the FUCK DUDE

**JS:** long story

**MJ:** Michelle SWORE it was Blindspot. She SWORE. I made her swear she told me tO CALM DOWN JOHNNY I HAVE PROOF.

**JS:** I’ve gotta drive. I believe you. And yeah. It’s blindspot.

**MJ:** YOU DOG.

**JS:** lol why did Peter stop by?

**MJ:** oh

**MJ:** he’s making me train with someone. He says if I know his whole deal, then I have to know self defense?

**JS:** …did he say who you’re training with?

**MJ:** idk I asked Michelle. She thinks it’s gonna be hornhead.

Godspeed, you sorry soul.

**MJ:** hey so are you two like,,,,,,

**JS:** no

**MJ:** damn

**JS:** it was really nice actually. We just talked. Didn’t even hold hands.

**MJ:** oh gross

**JS:** 😊

**MJ:** oh nasty.

**JS:** he’s so sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet

**MJ:** fucking hell this is disgusting. He’s not sweeeeeeeeet he’s just peter. God.

**JS:** sounds like someone’s jealous 🎶

**MJ:** obviously I’m jealous, he grew up hot. I’m only a woman. Is BT cute?

**JS:** idk I can’t get a read on him.

**MJ:** yeah but is he cute?

**MJ:** Michelle says he’s got an accent.

**JS:** ?? I mean?? Kinda? He’s got a drawl?

**MJ:** love a man with a drawl

**JS:** MJ. NYC drawl.

**MJ:** oh right

**MJ:** well that tracks because Michelle thinks he sounds ‘shy and intellectual’ and wants his number if your thing with peter is like, open ended or whatever.

Goddamnit, ladies. Johnny was trying to tie up a single loose end over here.

**MJ:** so like is that cool or nah?

**JS:** idk ask Peter. BT isn’t interested in me as far as I can tell.

**MJ:** is it because you’re blond?

Uh. Well, now that she mentioned it.

**JS:** maybe?

**MJ:** yeah if my boo kept fucking his life up with blond bitches I wouldn’t be too keen on them either.

**JS:** UM??? We don’t have time to unpack that statement???

**MJ:** you’re a blond bitch johnny sorry to have to be the one to tell you

**JS:** I hope it’s hornhead Peter’s dragging you to.

**MJ:** WOW. Okay but he’s hot, I’ll take it.

**JS:** MJ he’s like 40.

**MJ:** we call that a dilf

**JS:** I’m logging out of life. And also driving. Ttyl.

He got home and decided that he needed a shower and a workout to clear the thoughts of MJ hitting on Daredevil from his mind.

He nearly finished his game plan too, before the beast scrabbled back out from her burrow.

**MJ:** OMG JOHNNY

**JS:** did you meet hornhead?

**MJ: yes**

**JS:** no shit???

**MJ:** yeah Peter’s other friend was busy. **Listen to me.**

**JS:** no. don’t say it. Don’t you fucking say it.

**MJ:** he’s so hot.

**JS:** you have so many problems.

**MJ:** he’s so hot and I saw Blindspot I think (Asian guy???) and he’s hot too, but like, in a quiet kind of way. Totally get what Michelle was on about. I could see them together in heartbeat. Anyways, I’m becoming a boxer now. Please come to all my matches ❤💋

**JS:** wh

**JS:** hornhead taught you how to box?

**MJ:** yeah with his fucking monster arms. You should see them Johnny my boy, things of beauty. He tenderly adjusted my form and told me to pretend the bag was my father.

**MJ:** no one has ever understood me like this.

**JS:** MJ please. Your thirst is scarring me.

**MJ:** NO CAN DO. If YOU get to go out and drape yourself all over my childhood sweetheart and his very respectful boo-bear, then I get to wax poetic over Gorgeous McBoxerman. I’m getting a second lesson. Pray for me, I’m gonna swoon.

Johnny laid his head against the nearest solid piece of metal that he could find. He didn’t lift it when Ben opened the door to join him.

Ben walked up behind him and peeked over his hand to see Johnny’s phone screen. He snorted so hard he choked.

“Help me,” Johnny pleaded.

Ben hacked and cackled and slapped his back.

Thirty minutes was all it took for the other side of the equation to crack.

**PP:** Johnny.

**JS:** I know.

**PP: Johnny**

**JS:** I fucking know, man. I don’t know what to do.

**PP:** Sam’s terrified of her. What do I do?

**JS:** I l i t e r a l l y don’t know.

**PP:** should I tell Red? He’s doing me the favor? Is that rude? That feels rude.

**JS:** maybe have Sam do it?

**PP:** he can’t. he can’t look at Red rn without wanting to cry. She called him a ‘dilf’ Jonathan. Red doesn’t know what that means. He is only semi-internet literate. He Asked Sam What That Means. Sam works with him. Like, they share an office in their day job. That was a conversation they had to have and now they cannot escape each other for the next 4 hours.

**JS:** oh fuck.

**PP:** Wh

**PP:** how

**PP:** What do I do???

**JS:** okay wait I might have something for this.

“Hello?” Michelle’s tinny voice answered.

Johnny braced a hand against the gym wall.

“I will do _anything_ you want right now if you do me this one favor,” he pleaded, ignoring Ben’s howling on the mats in the background.

“Well, well, well. It’s nice to hear from you too, Torchy,” Michelle drawled.

MJ screamed that Wednesday when Michelle stepped out of the passenger seat of the car. Johnny stood back and let her suffer the rib-cracking hug on her own.

Michelle gazed at him in horror over the top of MJ’s bobbing red ponytail. He busied himself with leaning back into the car to grab his gym bag.

Boxing. How hard could it be?

Michelle’s eyes blew wide upon ducking into the dark gym and spotting Peter. Peter froze. They both held perfectly still, eyes locked, for what felt like an eon.

Michelle cleared her throat first. Eye contact shattered. Both her and Peter looked the opposite ways. Mary Jane popped back up from antagonizing Johnny to catch the end of it. She cocked her head; Johnny could see the cogs turning.

“Was that what I think it was?” she whispered.

_Nope_. Not touching it. Johnny wasn’t touching it. Peter and Michelle would be a match made in hell. He didn’t need to imagine them in any other way than they were presently. Nope, nope, nope.

“Johnny—”

“Twenty minutes,” a voice ordered.

“Dude, it’s my _lunch_.”

“Twenty.”

Who the hell was that?

Mary Jane’s fingers sunk viciously into the flesh of Johnny’s arm. He grimaced and tried to pull it out of her grip only for a hand to clasp his other shoulder. He looked up and found it to belong to Michelle. He glanced between them, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, only to look up and find hell itself slinking into the ring.

Daredevil was tall.

Daredevil was slim. Tight. Built like a tank, god _damn_.

And then there was Sam, following after him, not wearing the loose sweatpants and hoodie Johnny had last seen him in. Johnny swallowed.

Sammy was _ripped_.

Good. Lord.

He moved like his teacher, shoulders rolling, step nearly silent. He wrapped his knuckles with white tape as he went and nagged Daredevil the whole time. His eyes blazed blue in the dark and he shot out a hand and cupped Daredevil’s elbow out of nowhere. He pulled him slightly to the side of a bench.

“We have an entourage,” Sam said darkly.

“Oh? How many?” Daredevil asked him.

His voice sounded almost polite without his signature gravel in it.

“Four,” Sam said. “The two usual suspects. Two new ones.”

“Storm,” Daredevil said immediately.

“And another,” Sam said. “Your name, Miss?”

Michelle let go of Johnny’s shoulder.

“You don’t remember?” she asked.

Sam turned his head her way and his eyes were _burning_.

“Your name, Miss?” he asked again in the exact same tone.

“You know this person?” Daredevil asked him.

“Negative, Teach,” Sam said. “She seems to think she knows me, though.”

That was a warning if Johnny had ever heard one. He cleared his own throat.

“Thank you for letting us join,” he said. “It’s an honor.”

There was a pause.

“Who is this?” Daredevil asked Sam.

“Johnny,” Peter spoke up. “His voice has changed since you last heard it.”

“Storm?”

“Copy that,” Peter said.

Johnny needed to stop having this feeling with these vigilantes talking dark and dangerous to each other. It was _not_ appropriate to be sympathizing with Mary Jane here. It was not, it was not, it was _not_.

Daredevil hummed.

“I’ll take your honor, Storm,” he said. “It’s not every day one of your ilk deigns to stoop into the cesspit with the rest of us. Hope you’re ready to work.”

He didn’t say what he meant, but what he meant was, ‘I see you, seeing me, Human Torch. And I will break every bone in your body if you so much as whisper about a single feature you are witness to in this moment.’

“Wrap ‘em up, kids,” Daredevil said. “I got court at 2.”

For some reason (Reed), Johnny had always expected the devil to be constantly in motion. Every video clip and picture that Johnny had ever seen of his blurred body supported this, but the man in front of him--the one who’d picked open the top button of a crisp shirt to reveal blotchy, scarred flesh around the edges of a tank top undershirt—was complete and utter calm.

His calm came in the shape of a rhythm. Smooth, sloping movements surrounded by sharp ones. His fingers were broad and rough to the touch. His instruction was minimal.

He didn’t acknowledge Johnny again through an entire hour of twisting arms and making the MJs break out of his hold. Over and over and over.

“Against the thumb,” he murmured.

Mary Jane looked like she wanted to fan herself. Sam jerked his face directly to Peter’s and stared him down, down, down, until Peter edged away and sought refuge behind Michelle.

About two minutes before the end of a series of movements that Johnny himself had never experienced, there was a noise in the tiny entrance of the place, and Daredevil’s entire body went taut. Sam saw it and reacted with hunched shoulders.

They both held the stance, then DD’s arms relaxed.

“Downstairs, Fogs,” he called.

There was a swear.

“Your other downstairs,” DD said drily.

There was a shuffle, then a clatter, and then even more swearing. Peter snickered.

“Sammy, go help him, please,” DD said in a whole new tone of voice. “You’d think after nearly two decades a guy would learn a floorplan.”

Sam broke away from them and stuck his head out of the swinging glass door at the entrance.

“You lost?” Johnny heard him say.

There was a soft “god bless you, you scrawny little shit. Where’s your watcher?”

Peter snickered harder. DD’s arms migrated to his chest and he shifted his weight back so that his hip jutted out.

Sam reentered the room, tailed by a chubby, middle-aged guy wearing an Easter-pink shirt with a gray tie.

“A menace,” the dude gasped at DD’s face.

“Dear lord, where?” DD shot back.

Peter thought that was hilarious. DD broke his stance to reach out and ruffle his hair violently in gratitude.

“I’m headed back, Fogs, relax,” he said.

“Oh? Oh, this is ‘headed back?’” Easter-shirt said with a strong drawl. “My mistake, because this looked to me like another replay of _Million Dollar Baby_ , which we don’t have time for, sir, because _someone_ double booked us—oh, my bad— _triple_ booked us for—”

“It ain’t triple-bookin’,” DD said. “It’s—”

“--a terrific and awe-inspiring lack of time-management skills conducted by jocks who think they can sneak a work out in at lunch,” the bravest man in the world said over him. “Oh, sorry. Sammy, honey, can you help me find where I dropped the last fuck I gave? I lost it about ten years ago in a manhole, but I’m sure it’s washed up somewhere--”

Peter’s grin didn’t drop so much as a millimeter even as he took a strategic step away from the devil. The devil, for his part, appeared to be growing sourer and sourer by the second.

“You’re nagging,” he pointed out stiffly. “We said no more nagging.”

“In the office,” Easter pointed out right back. “This is not the office. I’m within my rights.”

“Objection.”

“Overruled.”

“Who died and made you judge?”

“The jury,” Easter said with finality. “You know, the one that you’re supposed to dazzle for the next hour? You’re not dazzlin’ anyone in that shirt—didn’t we talk about sleeves? Stereotypes, Matty. You look like a plumber.”

M—Matty?

Did—did this guy just—Holy shit, his balls were huge.

Daredevil (MATTY?????) rolled his head and then shook it.

“Plumbers are very respectable people—”

“ _I don’t care, Matthew_ ,” Easter interrupted. “It’s not the point and you know it. Go hide your nipples before we get thrown out in contempt before we’ve even gotten started. Chop, chop. Bad devil, no biscuit. Sam, you too. Go. GO.”

“I’m goin’. Jesus,” Daredevil burst out, throwing up his hands in a shocking defeat for the ages.

“Go faster,” Easter jabbed. “You want help? Here, just let me—nevermind, you’re disgusting. Do it yourself.”

“ _You’re_ disgusting.”

Michelle looked to Johnny for answers that he didn’t have; he looked to Peter and found him having a great time behind a set of rippling fingers. These caught Easter’s attention after he’d literally badgered and shoved Daredevil in the direction of the gym’s locker room.

“Oh, hey Peter,” he said kindly.

“Sup, Fogs?” Peter hummed.

“Not much, just trying to preserve our firm’s dignity for the next forty-five minutes,” ‘Fogs’ said amiably. “How’s your aunt?”

Peter shuddered with laughter.

“She’s fine,” he said. “Can I introduce you to some friends?”

Fogs checked his watch.

“Yeah, okay, I guess,” he said.

Mary Jane’s disappointment rushed to shore like a tsunami, but she managed to keep her smile on until Daredevil had been dragged back out into the light of the outside world against his will by Mr. Franklin Nelson, attorney at law.

You know, the Winter Soldier’s lawyer? _That_ Franklin Nelson?

Johnny appeared to have misplaced his jaw. 

“He’s gaaaaaaaaaaay,” Mary Jane sobbed the moment Daredevil, Mr. Nelson, and Sam had vacated the premises.

Peter finally let himself cackle. Mary Jane responded by locating her inner Ophelia and throwing herself into his shoulder.

“ _Why?”_ she asked the ceiling in abject misery.

“He and Fogs have been together for what, four years--five years now?” Peter said. “We’re all waiting for him to propose, but Matt’s allergic to commitment with men.”

He’s what?

“He’s a lawyer,” Michelle interrupted quietly.

Peter’s mirth vanished like smoke.

“An attorney, yeah,” he said. “Fogs blew that one for him.”

“Why?” Michelle asked in a weird tone. It was like she couldn’t believe it.

“Why not?” Peter asked.

“He’s a _lawyer_ ,” Michelle repeated. “Why would he make Daredevil if he’s already capable of getting justice for people?”

Peter sucked in his bottom lip and dropped his eyelashes.

“Everyone has their reasons,” he said.

“You can’t say that for everything,” Michelle snapped.

Peter glanced up at her and then huffed.

“Says you,” he said. “No one owes you their story.”

Johnny’s teeth clenched. This day was going so well. They didn’t need to fight, really.

“I—” he stammered. “I think—he’s really cool.”

Silence poured in through the gym windows. Everyone was staring at him. He cleared his throat twice.

“It’s—nice,” he said. “That he’s not going into this blind. You know?”

Peter stared while the others murmured agreement.

“Yeah…there’s just one thing,” he said.

Johnny closed the car door and put both hands on the wheel. Michelle closed the door behind her and Mary Jane splayed both hand on the dashboard.

They all sat completely still.

“I need a coffee,” Michelle announced.

Johnny needed a shot. But a coffee would do for now.

Reed lost his goddamn mind. The kind of mind-losing that incited him to scurry around the living room, flailing his arms and talking to windows. Sue glared at Johnny like he was the root of all evil for having bumped the first domino in this maze.

“—absolutely _incredible_. The accuracy of his readings—he must use echolocation, but whether or not it is as strong as, say, a whale’s, would be a false comparison given the density of water and—”

Sue sucked in enough air for a huge sigh and then asked Michelle if she wanted vodka or whiskey. Michelle was taken aback. She opted for whiskey. Sue didn’t measure it.

“—might be tested if he was willing to go into a sensory deprivation chamber—but could that actually exist for him, I wonder? It would depend on the intensity of the enhancement, maybe Banner would know if a chamber could be built to—”

Exhausting. Where was Ben? Ben could fix this.

Sue slammed down her mug and grabbed Johnny’s face with both hands.

“You’re so fucking smart,” she said. “Stay here.”

“—for _miles_ if the decibel was great enough—oh, _BEN_. Come here, Johnny just told us—”

Ben took Reed’s shoulder with immense, borderline uncharacteristic, patience.

“Reed,” he said carefully. “Why don’t you ask Alicia how she feels about this?”

Brilliant. Amazing. Ten out of ten stars. This was why they kept Ben around.

Alicia was screaming.

Reed was screaming.

This was a terrible idea.

Sue wasn’t even bothering with the coffee anymore. She offered Mary Jane and Michelle a straight shot each. Mary Jane took one. Johnny borrowed her glass when she was done.

“I want to meet him,” Alicia pleaded with Ben. “Please? Please, please, please?”

“Please?” Reed begged Sue.

Sue blinked impossibly slowly.

“I married you,” she reflected. “And you abandon me for—”

“Franklin Nelson’s boyfriend,” Johnny said over the top of his shot.

Alicia and Reed went stock still. Johnny downed the rest of the vodka. He was gonna need it.

Peter was feeding birds with Sam when Johnny found him. Sam, he gathered from the baby-talk, was a big fan of pigeons. Pigeons and only pigeons. He kept telling the crows to fuck off and mind their business. Peter gaped when Johnny sat down with them and accepted the fistful of seed dumped in his hand. Sam cocked his head in interest.

“Alicia Masters?” he said. “Like the artist?”

The one and only.

“She’s freaking out,” Johnny sighed. “She wants to meet DD so bad. She says she wants to do a portrait.”

Peter deferred to Sam who shrugged.

“I dunno how that’ll go down,” he admitted. “Teach hates people touching him.”

Peter thumbed back at him in agreement.

“Is that why he bit Reed?” Johnny asked, tossing out a pinch of seeds to the birds that had crowded onto his legs.

“No, that was because he’s a territorial dick,” Peter said.

“He thinks Reed’s trying to analyze him,” Sam added. “He doesn’t like to be known.”

Word.

“He might be okay with Mrs. Masters, though.”

No shit?

“Yeah, he does a lot of work for the NFB and the disability services at Columbia still. As long as he doesn’t feel like a specimen, he’d probably be chill.”

Nice.

“Could you ask him?” he asked Sam. “No pressure at all. I feel weird about it as it is.”

Sam raised an eyebrow and Peter leaned a bit into his side.

“I’ve got low-vision too, you know,” Sam said.

Johnny felt like someone had stomped on his toes. Sam could read it on him and chuckled.

“They’re magic eyes,” Peter said. He wiggled fingers so that Johnny would be 100% sure.

“My mom traded her soul for ‘em,” Sam mumbled.

That person came back and rolled back over the remnants of Johnny’s toes with a tractor.

“She must love you so much,” he blurted out.

There was a pause. Peter’s grin started to grow under his mask. Sam fed the birds quietly behind him. Peter turned back and made his eyes squint a little at Johnny.

Peter came over.

Repeat: Peter came over.

A third time because Johnny couldn’t believe this was happening: Peter Parker. Peter _Benjamin_ Parker. Entered the Baxter Building. Of his own volition.

He poked at the black couch inquisitively, then got distracted by Sue’s avocado experiments in the window. Johnny let him sniff around; he clung to the doorframe in the meantime, trying to understand how he’d gotten from the roof of Frederico’s once upon a December to Peter following Arcturus under the breakfast bar in this very moment.

Peter misjudged the space under the bar and smashed his head into it. Johnny barely kept himself from sliding down the doorframe.

Sue dropped her mug when she tried to move past him.

“Peter?” she said.

Peter slammed his head into the bar for a second time and made a pitiful sound.

“In?? You came in?” Sue asked.

Johnny almost hissed at her to shut up before she scared him away. But not to worry. Peter popped up with Rufus stuffed in his arms.

“Yes, ma’am. I heard y’all wanna meet my friend,” he said.

Sue was panicking, and while normally Johnny would be living for that, the kids were making a godawful racket that was sure to wake Reed from whatever chemically-induced slumber he’d put himself in, in the lab.

Hushing did not silence them. Peter was intrigued. He did not put down Rufus. Rufus wouldn’t let him. He hadn’t had this much undivided attention in years. He hissed at the kids. The kids remained undaunted. They crowded Peter and somehow knew that he was Spiderman. They had a thousand inappropriate questions which Peter absolutely was not going to answer, and true to form, he just watched them.

“I’m so sorry,” Sue said, scooping Val up into her arms and risking a meltdown in front of company. “They’re usually better behaved than this.”

Peter said nothing, still. He studied Val, who started to settle down under his gaze. Peter tipped his head to the side and she blinked and followed the gesture. Peter then arranged Rufus onto his hip in the same way that Sue was holding her.

Val giggled. Rufus struggled. Peter set him down, and it took Sue a moment to realize that he was telling her to put Val down, too. She bit her lip. Val struggled like the cat.

“Behave,” Sue told her before acquiescing.

Val scrambled away the second Sue let go and threw herself into Peter’s legs. She wrapped herself around them and pressed her cheek against one of Peter’s thighs. Frankie watched her in surprise.

“I’m a cat,” Val told Peter.

“Oh, I see,” Peter said.

He stooped and swept her up to plop her right onto his hip like he’d been holding Rufus.

“Are you a cat?” he then asked Frankie.

“I’m a cat,” Frankie bubbled excitedly.

“Hmm,” Peter said. “Well, alright.”

Reed emerged from his dungeon. Johnny was near to tears. The kids were shrieking in a whole new way now.

Peter was never going to be able to leave. Val and Frankie were already developing new expectations about Uncle Johnny and Mommy hanging upside-down on the ceiling with them.

Reed didn’t see them at first. He stumbled in and slurred a ‘where’s th’ ‘larm?’

Peter dropped down. He set both of the munchkins down and they went tearing for Sue, pulling at her hands and asking her if she’d seen that.

Reed did a double take.

“Wh—”

“What’s up, Doc?” Peter asked.

Reed needed a moment. He pointed at himself.

Peter smiled indulgently. Reed opened his mouth but was besieged by the kids talking all at once. They both were very insistent that they were cats. Reed’s brain was going to overheat at this rate, and Peter either felt it or smelt it because he cleared his throat and the kids shut up almost immediately.

Wizardry. This was wizardry.

“Is Mrs. Masters-Grimm home?” he asked. “I heard she wanted to see a man about a devil.”

Val sat in Reed’s lap and held his fingers while he vibrated himself into several separate planes of existence. Peter sat on the floor.

“My friend talked Red into a meeting on your behalf,” he said. “But Red’s tetchy about officials. He’s convinced that y’all carry ticks.”

Sue nearly choked.

“So you want vaccination records?” Ben asked. Peter twisted back to look at him. He stared for a long time.

“No,” he said. “Red’s my friend. I want a promise.”

Sue smoothed down Frankie’s hair.

“Go on,” she said.

Peter turned his gaze onto her.

“We keep secrets,” he said. “He’s been through a lot. Promise me that you won’t push his boundaries.”

Sue’s eyes softened. She caught Reed’s and put a hand over his and Val’s. He finally seemed to chill out.

“We promise,” Sue said for all of them. “This is a big deal, isn’t it, Peter?”

Peter beamed.

“Depends on how it goes,” he said.

Two days until the meeting and Reed was off the fucking walls. Johnny came back from a meeting with the Avengers and found him talking himself through deep-breathing exercises. He decided to leave that be.

Ben told him in the gym that it had been ages since he’d seen Alicia this excited.

“She keeps askin’ me if I think Red’s like her,” he said.

One day until the meeting and the kids were furious that they weren’t going to get to meet Daredevil. They argued, very convincingly, that Spiderman had _adored_ them. Surely Daredevil would love them, too.

Johnny got his first ever text from Sam in the wake of this. It read, “GOD NO. SPARE THEM.” Which made Sue laugh hard.

“So Blindspot,” she said. “Are we meeting him, too?”

Mm, Johnny wasn’t sure. Maybe. He and DD appeared to be a package deal.

“Is he cute?”

Cute? Pft.

“He’s short and hot,” Johnny said. “And I think—don’t quote me on this—but I _think_ he’s starting to warm up to me.”

Sue bounced her eyebrows.

“But mostly Peter,” she said.

“I think they’re having athletic sex without me,” Johnny said.

“And you’re mad about it?”

Actually, no? Somehow, no? He felt weirdly comfortable?

“Who are you and what have you done to my brother?” Sue accused.

“No one’s let me set the pace for a long time,” Johnny realized. “It’s sort of nice that they’re going at their own and waiting for me to jump in when I’m ready.”

Sue’s forehead crumpled. She reached across the table and caught ahold of his shoulder.

“I’m sorry it’s taken this long,” she said.

Nah, it wasn’t her fault.

Hours now, until the meeting. Johnny woke up to Arcturus laying on his chest, drooling and kneading. Drooling and kneading.

He meowed.

Johnny sighed and hugged him to his chest. He rolled over and stared at the wall.

Eleven years had been leading up to this. Eleven years and a peace could be brokered here between two groups of people who were, at their hearts, nearly the same.

They could do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a little clunkier than I would like but I need to start wrapping things up ❤


	10. gilded pins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The waitress asked Peter if he was on a caffeine quota today. He said that that was between him and God.
> 
> She refilled his cup and Reed’s and said to wave her down when they were ready.

They met Peter first. Everyone wore street clothes. Reed smiled at him and Peter’s eyes searched his face for traces of something. He must not have found it. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and said that Blindspot and Daredevil’s train was late.

They were apparently having a time of it.

“Literally the blind leading the blind,” Peter sighed. “Put ‘em on a train and they’re both hopeless.”

They waited. It was awkward. Peter rocked back and forth on his feet.

“How’s your aunt?” Sue asked.

“She’s fine,” Peter said.

Nothing else.

HNG.

“How’s the cult research going?” Johnny tried.

“Poorly, as per usual,” Peter hummed, blissfully ignorant of the alarm the others’ faces took on. “I finally met Mom, though.”

“No shit?” Johnny said. “Did you pass inspection?”

Peter squinted and tipped his head back and forth painfully.

“She’s not convinced,” he admitted. “It’s fine, I have that effect on people. His sister is much more on board. Says I’ve got ‘shapely legs.’”

Ben snorted. Alicia grinned.

“This your future mother-in-law, Pete?” Ben asked.

Peter listed hard to the left.

“That’s generous,” he said. “I think I’m aimin’ for Tolerant-in-Law. Possibly ‘my-son’s-gay-because-of-you-in-law.’ Most likely, ‘why-do-you-keep-showing-up-to-this-house-in-law.’”

The tension started to loosen.

“Folks aren’t much like their parents,” Sue pointed out. “There’s hope.”

Peter’s bottom lip rounded out sadly. He shook his head.

The place they were meeting was a restaurant. It was a diner, actually, and busy as hell. No one gave them a second look, and a glance to the corner told Johnny why.

This diner had its own personal storm cloud. He looked like an exhausted detective with a hand splayed across his forehead and a cup of coffee at his elbow. He was scrolling through a tablet and flipping through a collection of envelopes stacked neatly in front of him.

The Punisher was a whole lot less intimidating sitting in a booth with no vest on.

Peter made a sound at the door and the man lifted his head to give Peter a chin nod.

He was surprisingly handsome up this close. A man’s man, for sure, with a rugged chin and a nose that had seen some action, both stateside and abroad. Peter thumbed over his shoulder at the rest of them and shrugged his shoulders just enough to make his scarf bounce. Frank Castle cocked a brow, then stretched his back and went back to his documents.

Peter caught a hostess and asked for the round booth in the corner.

This diner was _crammed_ full of vigilantes.

“That’s Jess,” Peter whispered to them, pointing subtly to the table two booths back from Castle, at a woman with her forehead flat on the formica. A huge black man rubbed at her back soothingly. She batted him away listlessly.

“That’s Luke Cage. Jess is five months along,” Peter whispered.

Sue nearly spat out her orange juice.

“She’s--?”

“Yeah, but don’t say it, or you’ll summon Fisty.”

F—Fisty?

“Iron Fist? Danny Rand?” Peter asked.

Ben guffawed into his palms.

“’Fisty,’ though?” Johnny whispered. “No one deserves that.”

Peter’s expression went lifeless.

“Rand deserves it,” he deadpanned.

“Mr. Parker?”

Gone was the blankness in the face of the waitress. Peter beamed at her and said they were just waiting on two more. She asked if he was on a caffeine quota today. He said that that was between him and God.

She refilled his cup and Reed’s and said to wave her down when they were ready.

Three minutes into Peter explaining that no, no one was going to interrupt the guy on the other side of Frank Castle’s booth because that was asking for a mental breakdown no one in this place was equipped to deal with, the door opened and familiar bodies walked in. Red wore a long peacoat that really became him. Sam’s own coat was lined with studs and rings around the collar and sleeves. Peter noticed them but didn’t wave.

He didn’t have to.

Castle whistled sharply and DD’s face snapped in his direction.

“World Peace awaits, your highness,” Castle sniffed gruffly.

It felt like the whole diner snickered before going back to its business. DD gave no indication of offense. He was holding a long white stick in his right hand while his left cupped Sam’s elbow. Johnny looked away from him to catch Alicia’s fingers squeezing Ben’s arm in anticipation.

Johnny stood up when the two got to their table and Reed started to, but Daredevil held a hand out to him.

“No need,” he said, before twitching at the hand of the waitress touching his shoulder.

“One sugar, Mr. Murdock?” the bravest person in New York City asked.

“Ah, no sugar, dear,” Daredevil said kindly.

“Sugar, nephew?” the waitress asked Sam.

Sam produced a sharp middle finger from inside his coat.

“Sugar for the toddler, Mr. Murdock?” the waitress asked, gloating now.

“How dare you,” Sam said.

“How dare _me?_ Mr. Murdock, do you hear this?”

“Yeah, Matt, do you hear her being _rude_?”

“Sit,” DD told Sam. “He’ll have two, Leigha. Thank you, hon.”

Johnny’s brain stumbled on the petname and the way the waitress rosy-cheeked it back to the counter to whirl around and smirk at Sam. He sneakily tried to throw another bird, but the gesture was caught before it got liftoff.

“Sit,” DD ordered. “Peter, take him from me before I embarrass the both of us.”

Peter herded Sam into the booth by him. Johnny offered Daredevil his seat.

“It’s by Rocketman,” Peter helpfully added.

“Excellent, budge over, kids,” DD ordered. The slight against him thankfully didn’t affect Reed too much.

“So,” Reed said once everyone was settled in and coffee and tea and juice had been distributed, “Mr.--?”

He was just being polite. In the daylight, DD was unmistakable.

“Murdock,” he said stiffly.

“Richards,” Reed said. “We’ve met.”

“Oh, how I know.”

DD’s smile was sharp enough to cut glass.

“How are your fingers?” he asked.

The bark of laughter from Jessica Jones and Luke Cage’s table could not have been accidental. The whole room was watching how things went down.

Goddamn. Pressure much.

“Healed up fine, thanks,” Reed said. “I just wanted to say, on behalf of all of us, that we’re really grateful for you to take the time to meet with us like this. We really appreciate the amount of trust you—and your friends—are putting into this moment.”

There was a long pause in the diner.

“Kiss ‘im, Mother Theresa,” someone called.

“You shut your fucking face,” Murdock snarled over his shoulder.

“Thank god,” Sam whispered to Peter. “It was so quiet.”

“Make me,” the person called back.

“Oh, I’ll make you,” Murdock warned.

“EY. You sit the fuck down,” Castle snapped across the diner.

Silence once again took over.

“Go on, Red,” Castle said.

Johnny had never felt this tense in a restaurant—these were absolutely bar-brawl vibes they were working with. He could tell that Reed, Sue, and Ben were coming to appreciate this as well. Reed cleared his throat.

“I didn’t realize we’d have such an audience,” he admitted.

“Yours wants to be with one of ours,” Murdock said tersely. “Baby Storm’s fine with us; kid picked up Spiderbrat when the rest of us failed to. We owe him that much.”

Peter winked at Johnny.

“So the beef is with the rest of us,” Reed translated.

“More or less,” Murdock said. “But the Spiderkid believes that it is unwarranted and that you can be trusted to not run your fuckin’ mouths. Is that or is that not true?”

Wow, straight to the heart of things, huh, DD? Had he been elected to do this?

“It’s true,” Sue said.

Murdock frowned. His face moved between Johnny and Reed’s, trying to triangulate Sue’s location between them.

“Say it again,” he said, then viciously growled behind him again, “Whoever the hell is _clinking spoons back there_ , you’re on my list.”

The sound of utensils ceased.

“It’s true,” Sue said.

“Now you, Richards,” Murdock said. Reed’s eyebrows shot up.

“It’s true,” he said.

“Grimm.”

“You some kinda telepath, Red?” Ben asked.

DD’s lips remained tight and flat. His jaw looked much squarer against the dark of his coat collar.

“Is it or is it not true?” he asked.

Reed, Sue, and Johnny laid into Ben with a team stare. He relented.

“Yeah, alright. It’s true,” he said. “No one’s sayin’ shit to anyone about your posse here. It ain’t our business. We don’t actually care what y’all do in your spare time if it ain’t killin’ civilians.”

No one moved. Peter’s shoulders rose and fell evenly as he watched Daredevil. _Everyone_ seemed to be watching Daredevil. Everyone but Castle. He was picking at a carton of cigarettes on the side of the table.

“What’s the verdict, Counselor?” he asked for the establishment.

Murdock sat back slowly in his seat. His shoulders seemed to unwind, then abruptly, he stood up. Castle got up at the same time with a cigarette in between his lips. Both men moved towards the diner’s entrance wordlessly. Castle even opened the door for Murdock. Its bell rang in their wake.

DD had left his white stick.

“What’s happened?” Alicia whispered to Ben.

Ben opened his mouth, but Peter beat him to the punch.

“Y’all are bein’ measured,” he said. “The two extremes are takin’ conference. Give ‘em a few to fight it out.”

Five sweaty minutes passed. The clinking and chatter in the diner picked up again. Folks didn’t seem to be in a hurry here. A woman with long, wild hair and a headscarf left at one point only to be replaced with Wade Wilson and Ness in the doorway. Wilson wore a leather jacket that made his shoulders look endless. Ness didn’t look a day older from the last time Johnny had seen her; the only change was the dark to light fade in her hair.

She spied Johnny before Wilson and waved brightly.

She abandoned his arm to bustle over and flop right into Murdock’s seat. In the process, she shoved herself up against Sam, crushing him into Peter.

“Look at you _cuties_ ,” she cooed. “Everyone’s talkin’ about you two finally taking the plunge—oh hey, cat people. How’re you?”

Peter and Sam pushed back against Ness but had no chance when Wilson came over and bookended the edge of the booth.

“Doc,” he greeted. “Doc’s wife. Doc’s friend’s wife. Grimm.”

“Are you Alicia Masters?” Ness asked over the table. “I love your hair. I was telling Matt about your work, he’s—”

“Uncultured,” Wilson said, picking up DD’s coffee and taking a sip.

“Definitely swine,” Ness said charmingly. “You ever thought about breakin’ an arm off, Mrs. Masters? You know, like one of those—was it Greek? Babe, was it Greek? Them titty-statues?”

“Fuck if I know,” Wilson said. “Brainchildren, are them titty-statues Greek?”

Johnny belated realized that ‘brainchildren’ meant Sam and Peter. They stared owlishly.

“I think they’re marble?” Peter said.

“They’re marble,” Wilson told Ness.

“Damn, marble. That’s not your thing is it?” Ness asked Alicia disappointedly.

Johnny couldn’t tell if Alicia wanted to laugh or weep. Ben looked like he’d been slapped with a fish.

“It could be,?” Alicia said. “Do you want an armless statue?”

Ness’s hair slid off her shoulders as she considered the question.

“Where would I put it?” she hummed.

“Nowhere,” Wilson said. “We ain’t got room on account of all the fuckin’ cats—oh, hey, Red. Was this your seat?”

DD looked vaguely miffed, but not at Wilson.

“You’re in,” he told Reed firmly. “But not because of me.”

Castle took his seat again at his booth and did not turn around.

“Well, shit,” Wade said. “Welcome to the underworld, Fantastics. Benny, scoot over, we gotta fit Red’s fat ass in this campfire circle.”

The rest of lunch was surreal. Like, somehow not even awkward?

Johnny wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t anymore. He could only watch as Murdock made everyone on his side of the table scramble out of the booth so that he could park himself next to Alicia. The catcalling in the place ramped up to 11. People shouted for Ben to watch his wife.

Murdock told Alicia charmingly to ignore all their bullshit, he was naught but a humble, Catholic lawyer.

He let Alicia touch his face. The catcalling cranked up to 15 until Jessica Jones told everyone to shut the fuck up and mind their goddamn business or she’d puke on them.

Instant silence. Amazing.

Alicia told Murdock that he was exceedingly handsome, then he did something that made everyone on the vigilante side of the table startle.

He took off his sunglasses.

The damage to his eyes was a lot to take in. They still opened, but they were mottled and milky and the skin around them was distorted. He guided Alicia’s hands up to the scars.

“Not all pretty,” he said simply.

“Is it bad?” Alicia asked.

“I’m not sure. People tell me it is.”

It was bad. Reed was clenching his jaw in guilt. Wilson snorted.

“Don’t fall for it, girlie,” he said. “This is how he gets all the gals.”

Murdock grimaced his way.

“I’m having a conversation?” he said.

“Flirting,” Wilson said.

“I don’t flirt with _everyone_ , Wade.”

“Your boytoy tells me you flirted with a bust at your alma mater.”

Peter and Sam crushed themselves against Murdock, shoving him into Alicia’s space. She was grinning.

“A bust, Red?” Peter agitated. “How drunk were you?”

“Off,” Murdock snapped, to no effect.

“Cross-faded?” Peter asked.

“I thought you were a ‘model student,’” Sam goaded.

“Off or suffer.”

Sam and Peter crowded into Ness’s space instead, as if she would protect them.

“Ignore them,” Murdock told Alicia pleasantly. “I’m a happily committed man. I have only respect for yourself and your art.”

“Committed?” Ness asked. “Did you just say—”

“Oh my god, he’s gonna propose,” Wilson gasped.

About then was when Johnny realized that Red was the butt of every joke among these people—respected or not. He told Wilson to come closer. Wilson said that he was already married. Murdock abandoned Alicia to reached across Peter and Sam for Ness’s hand. She gave it to him, face dimpled as could be.

“Miss Vanessa,” Murdock said in a lower register.

“Mr. Matthew,” Ness said back, just as sultry.

“I think it is time that we had a tryst,” Murdock said.

“I’d like nothing less,” Ness said. “Wade, babe, gimme my purse.”

Wilson rolled his eyes.

“Trade for Nelson,” he told Murdock.

“Fuck you,” Murdock spat.

“Wow, jealous much. _Trade_.”

“Over my cold, dead—”

“Dr. Richards,” Sam said over all that nonsense. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’m sorry for these barbarians.” He reached over Murdock and Ness’s arms to offer his own to Reed.

Reed blinked and then leaned forward to take it.

“They’re fun?” he said. “And you are?”

“You can call me Sam,” Sam said.

“Blindspot?” Sue asked.

“Just Sam,” Sam said.

There was a pause.

“You’re Blindspot,” Reed confirmed.

“I’m Sam,” Sam said simply.

Peter leaned an elbow on the table and winked at Johnny. He looked like the cat that had gotten the cream. And he was.

“Sam’s got questions about cults,” Johnny told Reed.

Sam lit up like a floodlight.

“Do you know things about cults?” he asked Reed seriously.

Lunch devolved into Sam arguing with Murdock about what constituted a cult, if their office was one, and if the people in this diner had subconsciously made one. Reed waded into the building ire to lay out the definition of a cult and Murdock immediately weaponized it to point out that neither his and Sam’s office nor the diner had a charismatic leader. Ergo, no cult.

Sam thought that having one missing element wasn’t enough to disqualify the idea here. He pointed out that the diner had, collectively, just inducted the F4 into vigilante culture.

Murdock called this an initiation rite. Sue asked him if there were others and how he’d been initiated, and Wade explained that before they’d gotten together enough night stalkers and assassins to fill a restaurant, they’d had a baptism-by-Hudson policy.

This allegedly took place outside one particular bar that Wilson would not name. It was unclear, really, if this was true or Wilson was just fucking with them, but Ben thought it was a great idea and they should do it to Frankie and Val.

Sue objected. Reed had a think. Sue objected to his thinking.

Peter left them to bicker and Sam to rage against his mentor and told Wade and Ness to move so that he could get out of the booth. Everyone moved a space to the left, taking their conversations with them. Peter settled in next to Johnny with a familiar smile.

Sunshine off the Atlantic.

Fingers found Johnny’s knuckles under the table. He turned over his hand and let Peter’s rest against his, palm to palm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can I just get a waffle?


	11. pigeons and crows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pigeons and crows. Peter was so easy to find.

“Am I more than you bargained for yet?—”

Pigeons and crows. Peter was so easy to find.

“Am I more than you bargained for yet—”

Sam had texted Johnny that he was somewhere up high. He didn’t have time to figure out where exactly, he was being stared down by a furious archivist.

“Am I more than you bargained for yet—”

The Spiderman suit melted into the city during the daytime. It wasn’t awkward. It didn’t flash and stomp like it did at night. It was just Peter’s comfort.

Spiderman was safety. Peter could be who he wanted to be in that suit. He could forget all of the little problems at his feet for the time being.

He could breath.

He could sing.

Johnny felt that. But the suit could be as suffocating as it was freeing. The suit for him was a mask—almost more than it was for Peter. Johnny understood this now.

He had grown up. He wasn’t just Johnny Storm the Human Torch anymore. He was allowed to be Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. He was allowed to be himself first. That was what Peter had always wanted from him. That was the order that Peter had set him and the mask in from the start, even when Johnny had been floundering, trying to figure out how to even do that for himself.

“Am I more than you bargained for yet—”

Not anymore, Mr. Parker.

Spiderman.

Thank you for always being there to catch this falling star.

“Am I—hey, Johnny. Whatcha hangin’ back like a creep for?”

“I love you,” Johnny said.

Peter’s spine straightened and his red and blues slowly twisted back. He cocked that red face and those wide white eyes.

“Well, I sure hope so,” he said. “We’re kinda dating, boo. Stop bein’ weird. C’mere, look. These rich people are moving, and they’ve got six billion plants and a whole-ass aquarium. I’m waitin’ for the piano.”

“Am I more than you bargained for yet?”

“I’ve been dying to tell you anything you wanna hear, ‘cause that’s just who I am this week,” Johnny sang.

Peter’s feet stopped kicking.

“You know the song?” he asked with huge eyes.

Johnny snorted.

“Everyone knows the song, Pete, it’s Fall Out Boy,” he said over the cooing of the birds.

“Yeah, but not everyone can sing,” Peter jabbed. “I can’t sing. Sing more.”

“Sing more what?” Johnny said. “Those are the words.”

“More of the song,” Peter huffed. “Sing more of the song.”

The city was gray. The movers down below were still trying to play trunk-Tetris with a wall-sized aquarium and a divan.

“We’re going down, down in an earlier round, but Sugar, we’re going down swinging,” Johnny sang softly to them. “I’ll be your number one with a bullet. A loaded god complex, cock it and pull it—”

“WOAH. Gun violence?” Peter interrupted. “No, that’s wrong. You don’t know shit.”

Wh—

Dude. Those were the lyrics.

“They’re not. You can’t fuck with me, I’ve got a brain full of shitty half songs,” Peter sniffed.

“Those _are_ the lyrics, Pete.”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

“Are _not_.”

For fuck’s sake. This man knew how to ruin every moment.

“Do it without the gun violence.”

“Peter,” Johnny moaned into his hands. “Those. Are. The Lyrics.”

“Well, make better ones.”

“I can’t just _make_ new lyrics, man.”

“Believe in yourself, Johnny Storm,” Peter said.

Johnny froze and then cackled.

“You’re such a mess,” he said. “Ask Sam, he’ll tell you the same thing.”

“No, he won’t. He lies to my face all the time. He told me alligators have six toes the other day.”

Johnny was now aware that Sam’s idea of a good time was snatching DemonBug out of Johnny’s closet, somehow giving her the capacity to clean carpet again, and then building her a twin called Dragonfly with spinning knife features.

If Murdock hadn’t told him that Reed had gotten the F4 where they were by being almost hysterically irresponsible, Johnny was sure that those two would be attached at the hip at this point.

“You make up new lyrics,” Johnny said. “I’m all ears.”

Peter’s mask eyes squinted. He jerked his face haughtily back down towards the movers.

“New song,” he said.

“Awww, are you butthurt?” Johnny teased.

“ _New song_.”

Hm.

“Are you nervous for your opening?” Johnny nudged.

Peter went stiff.

“I can not come,” Johnny offered. “If it makes you feel weird.”

He got nothing. Peter snatched his hand away from where it was laid by Johnny’s and started collecting birds into his arms. They beat their wings and latched onto his shoulders. Peter was left with one of the brown and white spotted hens in his lap. She endured his stroking with endless tolerance.

“You have to come,” Peter mumbled. “It’s law. Miranda said so. And it’s not you, anyways. It’s Jameson.”

Ah. The bossman.

“I just want him to _see_ , Johnny. But what if he doesn’t? What if he doesn’t like them?”

Peter’s future career hinged on this. He could spend the rest of his life freelance, shooting weddings and highschool senior photos, submitting images to paper after paper, trying to get his name out there, or he could finally graduate to fulltime at _The Bugle_. Health insurance came with that job. Dental, vision. School could be finished at night. Tuition wouldn’t come at the expense of a gasp.

May wouldn’t have to worry as much. She was what was making Peter twist, turn, and repeat these lyrics right now.

Johnny offered him a hand. Peter looked at it, then the hen. Johnny wiggled his fingers until Peter took them.

“Gimme a kiss,” Johnny said.

Peter started to pull away.

“Ah--Nah. Gimme a kiss,” Johnny repeated.

The pulling was bashful this time until Peter let himself be dragged in close enough for Johnny to lift his mask.

His bottom lip was chewed raw and red. It was warm against Johnny’s.

Johnny pulled back and tucked the mask down and let Peter squirm and blush and tell the birds to look away.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Johnny said. “You’re amazing. The amazing—”

“Don’t you fucking say it.”

“The amazing—”

“Jonathan, don’t you—”

“ _The amazing Spiderman_ ,” Johnny finished. “And your art is a reflection of that. Trust your gut, Pete. This is you on display.”

Johnny watched Peter’s red hand spread over his chest as he ruminated. He didn’t point out that John Jonah Jameson had been holding a fulltime job open for two years, somehow finding excuses not to fill it every time the opportunity arose.

Peter couldn’t see that forest for the trees right now. And that was okay. Johnny and Sam had eyes enough for him.

“We’re going down, down, in an earlier round, but Sugar, we’re going down swingin’,” Peter murmured.

“I’ll be your number one with a bullet,” Johnny added. “A loaded god complex, cock it and—”

“NO VIOLENCE, JOHNNY. _Jesus_.”

He laughed into the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're DONE. 
> 
> Thank you everyone for coming with me on this journey of **Pigeon and Crow** This is the end of the series. I had a shitload of fun playing in this sandbox. Thank you so much to everyone who read along. Thanks to everyone who commented, y'all helped me push through this when I lost momentum so many times. 
> 
> Also big thanks to Myth for answering all my F4 questions and helping me flesh Johnny out into a character who felt real. You, boo, you're the MVP.


End file.
